GIFT   OF 


6 


GOETHE'S 
LIFE-POEM 


As  set  forth  in  his  Life  and  Works 


BY 
DENTON  J.  SNIDER 


ST.  LOUIS,  MO. 

SIGMA  PUBLISHING  CO. 

210  PINE  ST. 

1915 

' 


CONTENTS. 


Part  First.  GOETHE  THE  YOUNG  MAN  ....  5 

Chap.  I.    Infancy  to  Majority 20 

I.  In  the  Parental  Home 25 

II.  Goethe's  Father 35 

III.  Goethe  as  Phileros 46 

IV.  University  of  Leipzig 56 

V.  Home  Again 82 

VI.  University  of  Strassburg 92 

Chap.  II.  The  Frankfort  Quadrennium  123 

I.  Gotz  Von  Berlichingen 137 

II.  Sorrows  of  Werther 145 

III.  Titanic  Fragments 157 

IV.  Faust   167 

V.  Lili 173 

Chap.  III.   The  Weimar  Decennium. . .   183 

I.  Little  Weimar 192 

II.  Little  Weimar's  Ruler 201 

III.  Frau  Von  Stein 205 

IV.  Literary  Production 219 

V.  Longing  for  Italy 230 

(3) 


403180 


4  CONTENTS. 

Part  Second.  GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  .   234 
Chap.  IV.  The  Solitary  Goethe 281 

I.  Goethe's  Dramatic  Trilogy 287 

Egmont,  Iphigenia,  Tasso . .  .  289 

II.  Goethe's  Living  Drama 357 

III.  Goethe's  Classic  Measures 373 

IV.  Eeynard  the  Fox 380 

Chap.  V.  Goethe  and  Schiller 390 

I.  Works  in  Partnership 415 

II.  Meister's  Apprenticeship 427 

III.  Goethe's  Epical  Mood.. 444 

IV.  Reversion  to  the  Drama 459 

(1)  Natural  Daughter 462 

(2)  First  Part  of  Faust 468 

Chap.  VI.  Goethe  Alone  Again 477 

I.  Goethe's  Marriage 481 

II.  Pandora 488 

III.  Love 's  New  Epiphany 494 

Part  Third.  GOETHE  THE  OLD  MAN 502 

Chap.  VII.  Minna  Herzlieb 521 

I.  Elective  Affinities  524 

II.  The  Aphoristic  Goethe 529 

Chap.  VIII.  Marianne  Willemer 535 

I.  West-Eastern  Divan 538 

II.  The  New  House  of  Tantalus...   544 

Chap.  IX.  Ulrike  Von  Levetzow 553 

I.  Trilogy  of  Passion 562 

II.  Meister's  Journeymanship 570 

III.  Passing  of  Goethe's  Son 579 

IV.  Second  Part  of  Faust 590 


Goethe's  Life -Poem 


fart  Jirst 


tne    Woun\ 


a 
v 

(1749-1786). 

Goethe  at  Rome,  quite  in  the  middle  of  his 
long  career,  takes  a  look  backward  upon  what 
he  has  already  passed  through  in  his  earthly 
discipline,  and  breaks  forth  into  an  exalted 
utterance  concerning  what  he  deems  the  su- 
preme turning-point  of  his  life:  "I  am  cel- 
ebrating as  a  second  birth-day,  as  a  true  pal- 
ingenesis, the  day  on  which  I  entered  Rome." 
(October  29,  1786.)  So  he  writes  in  a  letter 
to  a  literary  friend  who  had  been  watching 

(5) 


6  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

his  course  for  many  years  and  who  could 
probably  appreciate  him  better  than  any 
other  man.  Thus  the  poet  speaks  of  his  new 
birth  as  he  views  himself  rounding  the  chief 
turn  or  node  of  his  total  evolution.  Many 
other  declarations  made  in  his  later  days 
could  be  gathered,  showing  the  sovereign  im- 
portance with  which  he  regarded  his  Italian 
Journey. 

The  significance  of  these  statements  of  his 
for  us  is  that  he  emphatically  periodized  his 
own  life  in  order  to  measure  it  aright  and 
thus  to  comprehend  it  fully.  The  Pre-Italiari 
time  was  to  his  mind  o«ne  great  Period  which 
he  had  gone  through  and  brought  to  a  defi- 
nite close  by  his  sudden  flight  to  Italy.  What 
he  did  for  himself  with  such  persistance,  we 
still  propose  to  do  for  him  in  this  account  of 
his  career.  In  fact  the  biographer  of  Goethe 
can  easily  obtain  full  instructions  from  Goe- 
the himself  for  meting  and  bounding  the 
great  arcs  of  his  life's  cycle  which  we  call 
Periods.  His  own  stages  and  their  landing- 
places  he  well  recognized,  for  he  was  verily 
the  careful  self-scrutinizer  in  reviewing  his 
own  life-work.  Eeally,  he  was  the  most  self- 
examining  of  poets  in  spite  of  many  a  fling 
at  thinking  about  thought,  which  he  some- 
times deemed  his  disease.  Thus  our  narra- 
tive is  in  a  certain  degree  pre-ordered  by  the 


GOETHE  THE  YOUNG  MAN.  1 

poet  himself,  and  the  organic  points  of  his 
life-poem  we  shall  seek  through  his  own 
words  to  throw  into  a  stronger  light. 

Goethe  had,  then,  if  we  take  his  own  lan- 
guage, a  first  arid  second  birth,  the  one  of 
nature  and  the  other  of  spirit,  between  which 
two  births  he  placed  the  primal  grand  sweep 
of  his  whole  career.  This  early  sweep  of  his 
years  we  are  now  to  put  together  into  one 
thought  and  one  name,  designating  it  as  his 
First  Period  in  accordance  with  his  own  sur- 
vey and  outline  of  himself.  It  lasted  some 
thirty-seven  years  (1749-1786),  embracing 
the  total  range  of  young-manhood  quite  to 
the  margin  of  middle-age. 

We  are  next  to  ask  concerning  his  experi- 
ence and  achievement  during  this  time.  In 
general  it  is  to  be  regarded  as  his  great  new 
movement  and  advance  into  another  world  of 
culture  different  from  his  own,  which  he  has 
in  essence  appropriated.  He  is  getting  fully 
ready  to  be  steeped  in  the  classical  past  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  for  that  is  what  he  finds  in 
Italy.  Thereby  he  moves  from  one  civiliza- 
tion to  another,  from  modern  to  ancient,  from 
Teutonic  to  Mediterranean  spirit.  Perhaps 
the  deepest  shock  which  the  mind  of  man  can 
undergo  springs  from  such  a  transition  of 
world-historical  cultures.  But  Goethe  had  to 
perform  this  pivotal  act  of  the  ages  that  he 


8  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

become  the  universal  man,  fulfilling  an  im- 
pulse of  his  genius  which  kept  throbbing 
within  him  till  the  deed  be  done.  Still  such 
a  soul-overmaking  transition  must  be  pre- 
pared for  not  only  by  study,  but  by  a  certain 
ripeness  of  the  time  and  the  man.  Hence, 
this  First  Period  we  may  regard  as  a  kind  of 
cultural  apprenticeship  to  his  race's  develop- 
ment, which  he  is  in  due  time  to  appropriate 
in  its  own  home. 

Accordingly,  we  are  to  put  stress  upon  the 
fact  that  the  German  poet  during  this  First 
Period  never  once  quits  German  soil,  not 
even  at  Strassburg,  though  it  belonged  to  the 
French.  He  limits  himself  to  the  one  folk 
and  its  consciousness  whose  most  musical  and 
soulful  voice  he  becomes.  He  remains  ethnic 
simply,  patriotic,  even  nativistic,  though  he 
chafes  at  times  against  his  nation's  institu- 
tional walls.  He  will  not  yet  go  South  into 
Italy  though  he  beholds  it  longingly  from  the 
top  of  Alpine  St.  Gotthard ;  he  will  not  enter 
the  real  France,  though  he  stood  near  it  many 
months,  looking  over  its  border  as  it  were  to- 
ward its  center — Paris.  This  was,  therefore, 
emphatically  his  Teutonic  Period,  now  more 
than  ever  afterward,  when  he  had  tran- 
scended his  ethnic  narrowness.  But  inside 
the  German  boundary  he  wandered  about  a 
good  deal  during  these  years,  and  came  to 


GOETHE  THE  YOUNG  MAN. 

know  many  of  its  chief  localities,  for  exam- 
ple, Frankfort,  Leipzig,  Strasburg,  Weimar, 
the  mountains  of  Switzerland  and  Thuringia. 

Germany  was  dominated  at  this  time  by 
French  culture,  which  especially  took  hold  of 
its  ruling  classes.  Even  the  Duke  of  Weimar, 
Goethe's  own  friend  and  patron,  is  said  to 
have  preferred  till  the  end  of  his  days  the 
literature  of  France  to  that  of  his  own  Saxon 
city  of  the  Muses.  Voltaire,  more  than  any 
other  writer,  was  the  intellectual  ruler  of 
Germany,  and  her  greatest  king  called  him  to 
Berlin  to  wield  his  authority  of  mind  along- 
side the  royal  dominion  of  the  sword.  It  was 
this  French  supremacy  of  spirit  which  Goe- 
the assailed,  as  Lessing  had  done  before  him, 
and  centered  in  himself  and  his  group  of  fel- 
low-workers the  new  uprising  of  German  Lit- 
erature. 

It  was  a  contradictory  situation.  Fred- 
erick the  Great,  by  his  victories  over  the 
French,  especially  that  of  Rossbach,  awak- 
ened the  national  spirit  of  Germany  from  its 
death-like  somnolence  and  made  it  live  again. 
He  became  a  new  hero  to  the  Teutonic  folk, 
and  his  deeds  began  to  sing  in  its  soul.  Where 
is  the  poetic  voice  to  utter  such  a  song?  It 
had  already  started  to  hum  on  the  air.  But 
Frederick,  the  hottest  foe  of  French  polit- 
ical domination,  was  the  warmest  friend  of 


10  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

French  literary  domination.  He  could  not 
endure  the  German  hymn  of  his  own  victory. 
That  the  young  Literature  was  but  the  word- 
ed outburst  of  the  spirit  of  the  nation  which 
he  had  roused  to  fresh  aspiration  and  ex- 
pression, he  had  not  the  gift  of  seeing.  But 
that  is  just  what  Goethe  saw,  and  he  had  the 
genius  to  tap  this  deepest  fountain  of  all  true 
poetic  utterance  in  the  folk-soul,  and  to  set 
it  to  flowing.  Thus  Goethe  may  be  deemed 
the  counterpart  and  co-worker  of  Frederick 
the  Great.  They  both  were  participants, 
each  in  his  own  field,  of  the  incoming  Teu- 
tonic renascence,  the  one  re-creating  the 
State,  the  other  the  Literature. 

Goethe  was  well  aware  of  this  deepest  in- 
ner bond  between  himself  and  Frederick,  in 
spite  of  the  latter 's  protest.  In  his  Autobi- 
ography (Book  Seventh)  he  has  thrown  his 
searchlight  upon  his  political  compeer,  and 
very  significant  of  his  own  poetic  method  is 
it  to  note  the  emphasis  with  which  he  affirms 
the  worth  of  the  national  deed  and  the  na- 
tional hero  to  Literature.  Hence  conies  his 
appreciation  of  Frederick,  the  people's  hero, 
as  the  real  source  of  the  new  German  renas- 
cence. Says  he,  in  a  deep-probing  passage: 
1  i  The  first  true  and  really  more  elevated  con- 
tents of  life  came  into  German  poetry  through 
Frederick  the  Great,  and  the  deeds  of  the 


GOETHE  THE  YOUNG  MAN.  11 

Seven  Years'  War.  Every  national  poem 
must  be  shallow,  or  become  shallow,  that  does 
not  rest  upon  the  ultimate  human  basis,  upon 
the  events  of  peoples  and  their  leaders,  when 
both  stand  for  one  man.  Kings  are  to  be  rep- 
resented in  war  and  danger  where  they  ap- 
pear as  the  first,  because  they  determine  and 
share  the  destiny  of  what  is  ultimate,  and 
thereby  become  more  interesting  than  the 
Gods  themselves,  wrho  if  they  determine  des- 
tinies do  not  participate  in  them.  In  this 
sense  must  every  Nation,  if  it  count  for  any- 
thing, possess  an  Epopee,  to  which  the  form 
of  an  epic  poem  is  not  exactly  necessary. ' ' 

And  now  by  way  of  counterblast  we  shall 
translate  from  Frederick's  French — for  he 
would  not  write  German  if  he  could  help  it — 
a  royal  thunderbolt  against  Goethe's  youth- 
ful drama,  Got  is  von  Berlichingen:  "a  detest- 
able imitation  of  those  wretched  English 
pieces,  full  of  disgusting  platitudes,"  which 
opinion  is  itself  an  imitation  of  Voltaire's 
venomous  drive  at  Shakespeare.  Goethe  is 
said  to  have  written  an  answer  to  this  rather- 
petty  tongue-thrust  of  the  high  monarch,  but 
to  have  suppressed  it  at  Weimar,  whose  Duke 
was  related  to  the  Prussian  king.  Anyhow, 
the  darkness  was  hardly  worth  the  poet's 
candle.  So  much  for  the  national  background 
of  this  First  Period,  which  runs  nearly  par- 


12  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

allel  with  the  reign  of  Frederick  the  Great, 
who  died  in  1786,  the  year  of  Goethe's  de- 
parture for  Italy. 

Thus  we  mark  that  the  poet  sees  himself 
centrally  located  in  the  great  historical  move- 
ment of  his  country  and  indeed  of  his  time, 
of  which  he  is  the  most  universal  utterance. 
But  in  deep  symmetry  with  the  world  with- 
out, he  also  voices  even  more  intensely  the 
world  within,  or  the  subjective  side  of  human 
nature.    In  this  sphere  his  peculiar  manifes- 
tation takes  the  form  of  love,  the  elemental 
bond  between  man  and  woman.     Far  more 
profoundly  than  ancient  Ovid    or    medieval 
Petrarch  he  is  the  darling  singer  of  Eros,  the 
Love-God,  whom  he  in  turn  loves  as  the  very 
soul  of  himself  and  of  the  All-Self.    So  pro- 
nounced and  life-unifying  is  this  strain  of  the 
poet's  personality  and  achievement  that  we 
intend  to  give  him  a  special  name  in  such  a 
character,  designating  him  as  Phileros,  not 
only  the  lover,  but  the  lover  of  Love,  which 
is  the  very  heart-beat  of  his  genius  and  drives 
its  pulsations  through  all  his  days  even  to 
old-age.    It  would  flame  up  again  and  again 
after  quiescent  lapses,  would  renew  his  cre- 
ative energy  and  throb  forth  a  fresh  overflow 
of  poetry,  keeping  him  forever  young  in  spite 
of  time's  mortal  pallor  in  his  cheek,  and  the 
flesh's  ever-crisping  corrugations.     On    the 


GOETHE  THE  YOUNG  MAN.  13 

whole,  Goethe  is  the  greatest  lover  the  world 
has  yet  seen,  running  the  entire  gamut  of  love 
from  its  lowest  sensuous  note  to  its  highest 
spiritual  transfiguration  in  the  mystical  song 
of  the  choir  of  angels  chanting  of  the  Eternal- 
Womanly  (Das  Ewig-Weibliche — in  the  last 
lines  of  Faust). 

So  it  comes  that  through  this  life-poem  of 
the  whole  Goethe  we  must  unfold  from  its  be- 
ginning to  end  the  character  whom  we  call 
Phileros,  really  the  one  character  of  all  the 
poet's  characters,  their  unity  and  fountain- 
head.  In  his  case  love  would  stream  down 
upon  him  as  the  elemental  power  of  Nature 
originating  all  individuality,  and  revealing 
that  deep  harmony  of  sex  which  the  creator 
himself  of  man  seems  to  impart  from  super- 
nal sources  for  the  right  genesis  of  hu- 
manity. 

But  behold!  there  rises  up  in  opposition 
the  foe  of  love,  and  hence  of  Goethe's  dis- 
tinctive genius,  calling  it  the  arch  tempter  of 
man  and  woman,  and  even  their  destroyer, 
labeling  it  and  its  poet  with  many  ugly  epi- 
thets in  the  name  of  morality  and  religion. 
Now  we  intend  to  listen  to  this  negative  voice 
also,  which  has  its  emphatic  meaning  and 
place  in  the  race's  spiritual  evolution,  for  it 
represents  the  vast  field  of  asceticism,  monas- 
ticism,  even  sacerdotalism  in  part;  its  wide 


14  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

range  extends  from  the  raptured  saint  to  the 
mocking  cynic,  aye  indeed  from  the  unmar- 
ried Christ  to  the  marriageless  Mephistophe- 
les.  What  a  long  list  of  antagonists,  unlov- 
ing and  loveless,  can  be  lined  up  through 
space  and  down  time  against  our  Phileros, 
the  unique  lover  of  love  and  its  supreme 
singer  and  protagonist  in  word  and  deed ! 
For  our  part  we  shall  often  take  their  stand- 
point and  duly  report  the  same  with  candor 
and  at  times  with  sympathy. 

Thus  looms  up  the  portentous  figure  hos- 
tile to  our  Phileros  and  his  work,  a  denying 
character  whose  many  shapes  we  may  sum- 
marize as  anti-Phileros,  who,  however,  be- 
longs to  this  life-poem  of  Goethe  if  we  are  to 
reveal  him  in  his  full  integrity  and  universal- 
ity. For  the  universal  man  takes  up  not  only 
himself  but  his  opposite,  as  God  does,  and 
realizes  both  in  his  total  achievement.  So  we 
can  see  that  Mephistopheles,  if  he  be  truly  the 
spirit  that  always  denies,  as  he  says  he  is, 
must  deny  his  own  creator  who  is  now  Goethe 
himself,  and  of  whom  he  is  a  phase  or  stage 
projected  into  an  active  and  independent  per- 
sonality. 

Now  it  so  happens  that  anti-Phileros,  or 
his  vicegerent  if  you  wish,  has  written  a  very 
complete  and  in  our  opinion  a  very  able  Life 
of  Goethe,  truly  a  representative  book,  voic- 


GOETHE  THE  YOUNG  MAN.  15 

ing  the  vast  population  of  Goethe  deniers. 
who  cannot  be  left  out  of  the  all-embracing 
life-poem.  The  author  is  a  monk,  a  Catholic 
priest,  hence  a  vowed  celibate  deeply  hostile 
to  Phileros  — the  Jesuit  Pater  Alexander 
Baumgartner,  whose  trenchant  style  can 
wield  in  full  force  the  Mephistophelean  scoff, 
along  with  the  fiend's  subtle  scorching  irony. 
To  be  sure  the  Jesuit  is  not  like  Faust,  a  de- 
nier of  Philosophy,  Jurisprudence  and  Medi- 
cine, and  especially  not  of  Theology,  unless 
it  be  the  Protestant  or  other  heretical  doc- 
trine. Still  his  tongue  is  aflame  with  the 
Hell-fire  of  Mephistopheles  for  damning  and 
burning  up  Mephistopheles,  or  what  he  opines 
to  belong  to  that  arch-demon.  •  So  we  shall 
confess  that  the  foregoing  anti-Goethean  bi- 
ography of  Goethe  is  more  significant  and 
unique,  and  to  us  more  interesting  and  dia- 
bolically poetic  than  any  other  written  life 
of  the  poet  within  our  knowledge,  which  is 
somewhat  extensive,  but  by  no  means  uni- 
versal, on  this  topic.  We  cannot  do  better, 
therefore,  than  to  let  this  denying  voice  speak 
on  due  occasions  for  itself  in  a  kind  of  anti- 
phony  to  the  poet's  own  song  and  deed,  since 
both  the  counterparts  belong  at  last  together 
and  should  be  builded  into  the  one  completed 
life-poem  which  we  are  trying  to  construct. 
Such,  then,  is  the  general  content  of  Goe 


16  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

the's  First  Period,  which  embraces  his  Pre- 
Italian  years,  and  their  discipline.  The  seeds 
of  his  greatest  works  are  at  present  sown, 
but  none  of  them  ripen;  Faust  is  not  the  only 
product  of  his  genius  which  starts  to  budding 
in  this  spring-time  of  the  poet,  and  matures 
gradually  to  the  close  of  his  last  Period, 
which  rounds  out  his  fulfilment. 

Here  the  inquisitive  reader  will  ask  about 
this  seemingly  formal  periodizing  of  Goe- 
the's life:  Why  keep  thrusting  it  under  our 
eyes  which  long  to  look  ahead  and  not  around 
and  aback?  Through  the  true  order  of  his 
Periods  we  penetrate  to  the  true  order  of  the 
poet's  completed  accomplishment,  and  com- 
mune with  his  soul  not  only  in  its  working 
but  also  in  its  work,  both  of  which  we  find  to 
be  at  bottom  psychical.  We  thus  can  share 
in  the  inner  process  of  his  genius  as  well  as 
in  its  vast  realization.  The  Period  images 
the  movement  of  the  poet's  creative  Self. 
But  it  reaches  far  higher  in  its  suggestion, 
and  adumbrates  the  process  of  the  All-Self 
reflected  in  an  individual  life.  If  every  man 
be  made  after  the  divine  pattern,  his  career 
should  message  in  some  sort  a  revelation  of 
his  Creator.  A  right  biography,  especially  of 
a  great  and  complete  career,  ought,  in  its  ulti- 
mate purport,  to  be  a  written  Theophany,  a 
manifestation  of  the  soul  of  the  Universe 


GOETHE  THE  YOUNG  MAN.  17 

itself  in  the  universal  man.  This  is  also  what 
elevates  the  single  biography  into  participa- 
tion with  its  creative  norm,  or  prototype, 
which  we  may  call  universal  biography.  Thus 
the  Period,  seemingly  so  external,  must  be  in- 
ternalized by  the  true-hearted  student  till  he 
sees  it  as  the  inmost  process  of  the  poet's 
achievement,  which  process  likewise  bears  the 
supreme  impress  of  the  Creation  as  well  as 
of  the  Creator. 

Goethe's  life  is  overwhelmed  with  partic- 
ulars, many  of  them  trivial,  in  fact  unneces- 
sary, and  even  dangerous  to  the  poet,  for  his 
soul  had  to  run  the  risk  of  getting  drowned 
in  the  day's  details.  But  he  possessed  the 
marvelous  gift  of  gathering  himself  up  from 
his  scattered  chores,  and  of  poetizing  his  life 
afresh,  in  lofty  moments  which  alone  are 
worth  the  record.  For  they  show  the  cre- 
ative descents  of  the  spirit  from  above  into 
his  genius  which  then  inscribes  the  message. 
Now  it  is  these  written  inspirations  of  his 
supernal  Muse,  which  we  are  going  to  organ- 
ize into  the  stages  or  Periods  of  one  fulfilled 
career,  which  thus  becomes  the  poet's  total 
poem. 

The  First  Period,  accordingly,  we  seek  to 
grasp  outwardly  as  a  definite  portion  of  Goe- 
the's life-time,  namely,  Goethe  the  young 
man,  till  nearly  his  fourth  decade  of  years. 


18  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

Now  this  Period,  though  but  a  part  of  a 
greater  cycle,  is  within  itself  periodic  and  has 
its  own  inner  process,  which  indeed  it  must 
have  in  order  to  be  such  a  part.  So  it  comes 
that  the  Period  will  have  its  own  divisions, 
or  rather  sub-divisions  which  show  that  it 
also  goes  through  stages  of  its  evolution, 
which  are  to  be  designated  and  ordered  ac- 
cording to  their  character.  Now  such  di- 
vision of  a  Period  should  have  its  special 
name  if  we  would  avoid  confusion;  accord- 
ingly we  shall  call  it  the  Epoch  throughout 
this  book  of  ours,  even  if  it  sounds  somewhat 
technical.  But  it  is  our  purpose  to  survey 
and  to  define  all  the  compartments,  greater 
and  lesser,  of  the  poet's  vast  and  multifarious 
activity. 

In  advance  let  it  be  noted,  then,  that  the 
First  Period  contains  three  distinctive  Ep- 
ochs, forming  together  a  process  which  at  its 
deepest  source  is  psychical.  During  this 
First  Period  Goethe  is  wrestling  with  the 
primal  problem  of  the  transmitted,  estab- 
lished, institutional  order  into  which  he  was 
born,  and  in  which  he  must  somehow  con- 
tinue to  live.  He  has  to  work  over  into  his 
inner  life  the  great  outer  world  of  prescrip- 
tion, convention,  tradition.  Accordingly  we 
shall  see  him  pass  through  the  following 
Epochs,  each  of  which  has  its  chapter. 


GOETHE   THE   YOUNG  MAN.  19 

.#• 

I.  The  time  of  the  externally  prescribed 
education  at  home  and  at  the  university— 
the  prescriptive  Epoch.     From    Infancy    to 
Majority — First  Chapter. 

II.  The  time  of  revolt  against  the  trans- 
mitted  order   generally — his    Titanism — the 
anti-prescriptive      Epoch  —  the      Frankfort 
Quadrennium — Second  Chapter. 

III.  The  time  of  inner  renovation  and  rec- 
onciliation with  his  environing  social  and  in- 
stitutional world — the  re-prescriptive  Epoch 
—The  Weimar  Decennium — Third  Chapter. 

Such  is  a  brief  forecast  of  the  poet's  round 
of  epochal  experiences  during  his  Pre-Ital- 
ian  career.  Of  course  the  justification  of 
these  divisions  cannot  be  given  before  hand 
—their  significance  will  only  appear  when 
the  concrete  facts  have  told  their  story. 


20  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 


CHAPTER  FIRST. 

FROM  INFANCY  TO  MAJORITY. 

Having  thus  in  outline  surveyed  our  first 
great  field  which  we  call  the  First  Period  of 
Goethe's  total  career,  we  next  look  inside 
this  enclosure,  and  find  that  it  has  some 
strongly  significant  lines  seaming  through  it 
which  sub-divides  it  into  lesser  though  clearly 
bounded  departments.  For  instance,  right  in 
the  center  of  it  rises  up  to  a  mountainous 
height  and  prominence  the  mighty  literary 
volcano  known  as  Storm  and  Stress  (Sturm 
und  Drang),  which  has  given  its  name  to  a  pe- 
culiar form  of  written  activity  not  merely  in 
German  but  in  Universal  Literature.  This 
activity  or  movement  in  Goethe's  case  did  not 
last  so  very  long,  only  some  four  years,  but 
it  made  an  Epoch,  as  it  is  commonly  called, 
and  so  we  shall  call  it. 

But  this  sudden  eye-catching  outburst  had 
a  previous  time  of  training  and  preparation, 
before  it  was  able  to  evoke  itself  into  being. 
We  can  hear  its  early  rumbles  while  Goethe 
was  passing  from  his  twenty-first  birth-day 
to  his  twenty-second  at  Strassburg,  but  the 
upheaval  did  not  take  place  till  he  reached 
home  in  Frankfort  not  long  afterwards, 


FROM  INFANCY  TO  MAJORITY.  21 

Then  the  Storm  and  Stress  broke  forth  in 
full  fiery  fury.  Still  the  volcano  had  to 
gather  its  materials  and  fuse  them,  and  other- 
wise get  ready  to  explode. 

Now  this  time  of  preparatory  discipline 
and  multiform  youthful  experience,  extend- 
ing from  the  poet's  birth  till  his  majority,  is 
what  we  shall  throw  into  a  smaller  distinct 
province  or  rounded  enclosure  by  itself  for 
the  purpose  both  of  adequate  scrutiny  and 
right  organization.  This  earliest  tract  of 
years  and  their  education  we  shall  call  the 
First  Epoch  of  Goethe 's  entire  career,  or  the 
First  Canto  of  his  life-song,  for  the  poet's 
life,  we  repeat,  is  for  us  a  poem,  even  in  its 
outer  mechanism  and  mathematical  ordering, 
which  it  is  our  purpose  carefully  to  set  forth. 

We  shall  try  to  lay  down  in  advance  some 
guiding  lines  which  may  conduct  the  reader 
helpfully  to  the  ultimate  significance  of  this 
prelude  to  the  total  Goethean  symphony  of 
existence.  Of  course  it  is  the  age  of  the 
youth's  education,  the  time  in  which  he  is  to 
acquire  the  transmitted  schooling,  from  his 
his  mother's  knee  to  the  learned  lecture- 
room*  from  the  alphabet  to  the  University, 
aye  to  his  two  Universities,  with  the  last  one 
of  which  (Strassburg)  this  Epoch  closes. 
Hence  it  is  a  time  of  prescription,  even  if  he 
makes  boyish  mouths  at  it  almost  from  baby- 


22  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

hood;  he  has  to  win  the  transmitted  instru- 
mentalities of  all  culture  and  to  learn  how  to 
use  them  on  his  own  account.  He  acquires 
the  ancient  and  modern  tongues  which  con- 
tain the  spirit's  treasures  of  the  past- 
Greek,  Latin,  Hebrew,  French,  English,  Ital- 
ian— and  he  also  develops  a  voracious  appe- 
tite for  literature  in  his  father 's  library.  To 
be  sure,  he  resents  all  restraint,  and  secretly 
defies  /pedagogy;  still  he  appropriates  the 
traditional  education,  but  flings  off  its  strait- 
coat  of  laborious  erudition. 

At  the  same  time  he  has  to  live  and  to  be 
reared  in  and  through  a  social  and  institu- 
tional order  whose  rule  he  begins  to  feel 
cramp  him  in  his  swaddling  clothes,  and  the 
boy  grows  up  in  a  mood  of  resistance  to  its 
behests.  With  his  other  learning  he  learns 
to  dislike  and  even  to  defy  parental  and  com- 
munal authority,  as  something  alien  to  his 
nature.  It  is  evident  that  the  rebel  Titan  is 
waxing  in  him  with  many  a  little  outbreak 
which,  however,  is  at  present  soon  sup- 
pressed by  the  overwhelming  might  of  estab- 
lished custom  and  law.  Still  there  is  brood- 
ing in  him  during  this  Epoch  the  potential 
revolt  against  all  institutions. 

The  climax  of  the  tyranny  of  prescription 
was  when  his  father  forced  upon  him  a  hate- 
ful profession,  that  of  the  law.  He  yielded, 


FROM  INFANCY  TO  MAJORITY.  23 

else  he  could  not  have  bread  ancTbutter ;  but 
he  felt  that  he  was  wronged  by  a  paternal 
right  in  the  very  essence  of  his  individuality. 
He  was  not  peftnitted  to  choose  his  life's  vo- 
cation .harmonious  with  his  hope,  aspiration 
and  aptitude.  Goethe  will  never  forget  this 
misfit  of  man's  calling  and  its  bad  effect  up- 
on human  happiness  and  excellence.  Indeed 
when  he  gets  free  himself,  he  will  try  to  rec- 
tify it  in  others.  Again  and  again  we  shall 
see  him  readjusting  people  of  his  environ- 
ment who  are  displaced  in  their  life-work, 
and  hence  both  unhappy  and  inefficient.  From 
this  early  experience  he  was  led,  we  may  sup- 
pose, to  enact  the  part  of  a  benevolent  Prov- 
idence for  those  whom  he  saw  suffering  as  he 
once  suffered. 

Still  in  spite  of  all  conventional  restric- 
tion and  repression,  our  poet  continued  to  de- 
velop during  this  Epoch  along  the  deepest 
and  innermost  bent  of  his  Nature.  The  rec- 
ord of  his  love  unfolding  through  these  early 
years  reveals  the  very  soul  of  his  being,  the 
most  intimate  evolution  of  his  poetic  genius. 
The  part  of  Phileros,  the  lover  of  Love,  and 
also  the  central  character  of  his  life-poem, 
now  has  its  prelude,  and  starts  its  connect- 
ing movement  which  interlinks  all  the  creat- 
ive nodes  of  his  career.  Three  loves,  yea 
four,  elemental  we  name  them,  which  seem  to 


24  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

come  unbidden  from  supernal  sources  with  a 
sudden  overmastering  downrusli,  he  experi- 
ences during  this  adolescent  Epoch,  besides 
a  number  of  amatory  fancies  not  coercive  in 
their  urgency.  Now  this  elemental  love, 
deeply  necessitated  in  himself  and  also  in 
Nature,  as  he  believes,  is  the  inner  driving- 
wheel  of  his  Autobiography  which  records  in 
his  sixties  with  such  fullness  and  glow  the 
days  of  his  youth,  especially  the  present  Ep- 
och. But  it  also  throbs  the  pulse-beat  from 
the  heart  of  his  whole  life  whose  ultimate 
movement  it  directs  and  organizes.  Such  is 
the  part  of  Phileros  which  we  wish  to  dis- 
tinguish and  emphasize  as  the  golden  strand 
stringing  all  his  creative  years  together  and 
their  manifold  works  and  occurrences. 

Here  may  be  cited  a  passage  from  one  of 
his  letters  in  which  he  sets  forth  love  as  the 
genetic  source  of  all  our  knowledge,  as  the 
original  power  which  enables  the  mind  to  cre- 
ate anew  what  it  truly  knows :  ' '  We  cannot 
learn  to  know  anything  except  what  we  love ; 
and  the  deeper  and  more  complete  our  knowl- 
edge is  to  become,  the  stronger  and  more  vital 
must  be  our  love,  yea  our  passion.''  (From 
a  letter  to  F.  H.  Jacobi.)  So  it  results,  my 
reader,  that  we  must  love  Goethe  ere  we  can 
know  him,  even  his  faults. 

But  to  recur  to  the  general   character   of 


IN   THE  PARENTAL  HOME.  25 

this  First  Epoch,  we  are  to  see  that  it  is  a 
time  of  prescription,  of  tradition,  of  the  ac- 
quisition of  the  past  for  the  young  man;  he 
accepts  the  established  order  of  his  environ- 
ing world  of  convention,  even  if  the  distant 
roll  of  Titanic  thunder  can  be  heard  mutter- 
ing an  ominous  protest.  But  our  immediate 
duty  now  is  to  unfold  the  salient  events  of 
this  Epoch  reaching  from  the  poet's  infancy 
to  his  majority. 


In  the  Parental  Home. 

"On  the  twenty-eighth  day  of  August, 
1749,  while  the  noon  bell  was  striking  twelve, 
I  came  into  the  world  at  Frankfort-on- 
the  Main."  With  such  an  abrupt  initiative, 
Johann  Wolfgang  Goethe  opens  his  Auto- 
biography, adding  that  the  sun  and  stars 
were  auspicious  to  his  first  appearance, 
though  the  moon  shone  in  decided  opposi- 
tion. To  this  celestial  stress  he  intimates, 
might  be  ascribed  the  fact  that  "I  was  born 
as  if  dead,  and  only  by  many  exertions  was 
I  brought  to  open  my  eyes."  Foreshadowy 
life  started  with  him  in  a  desperate  struggle 
which  held  out  to  the  end. 


26  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

Thus  Goethe,  looking  back  at  himself  from 
the  threshold  of  declining  years,  speaks  of 
the  earliest  moments  of  existence,  hardly 
from  his  own  memory,  but  chiefly  from  that 
of  his  mother,  who,  according  to  Bettina, 
failed  not  to  tell  of  her  labor  in  bringing  such 
a  prodigy  into  the  world.  The  grandmother 
was  also  present,  as  was  proper,  a  thin,  white, 
neatly  dressed  old  lady,  hovering  around  the 
bedside  "like  a  ghost,"  who  exclaimed  at 
the  critical  point,  when  the  infant  first 
turned  up  its  trembling  eye-lids:  "Daugh- 
ter, he  lives."  Such  is  the  record  of  Bettina, 
evidently  drawn  from  the  fountain-head  with 
its  right  dramatic  stroke.  Nor  is  it  human 
to  omit  the  same  reporter's  account  of 
Goethe's  mother,  who  said  of  that  moment 
afterwards:  "Then  awoke  within  me  my 
mother-heart,  and  has  lived  ever  since  in  a 
continuous  flutter  of  enthusiasm  to  this 
hour, ".when  she  was  seventy-five  years  old, 
continues  Bettina.  More  than  any  other  man 
of  genius  known  to  history  was  Goethe  his 
mother's  son,  and  so  in  this  little  prelude  to- 
his  life  she  may  well  be  assigned  the  princi- 
pal part.  She  lived  to  see  that  son  the  great- 
est man  that  Germany  has  produced  since 
Luther,  dying  September  13,  1808  (born  Feb- 
ruary 19,  1731,  married  August  20,  1748). 

Here  we  shall  place  in  first  rank  a  charac- 


IN   THE  PARENTAL  HOME.  27 

teristic  of  hers  which  she  hersllf  has  de- 
scribed in  a  letter  of  1776:  "I  possess  a  treas- 
ure of  stories,  anecdotes,  etc.,  which  I  pledge 
myself  to  prattle  off  eight  days  long  without 
repetition. "  She  had  made  herself  instinct- 
ively a  vast  depository  of  folk-lore,  which 
she  could  string  out  indefinitely  in  naive  pop- 
ular narration,  yet  with  many  a  fantastic 
turn.  So  we  have  to  think  that  it  was  at  her 
knees  that  her  boy  first  became  acquainted 
with  mythical  treasures  of  the  people,  source 
of  all  true  living  poetry.  The  fountain  of 
original  Teutonic  folk-song  and  folk-tale  was 
tapped  for  him  by  his  mother,  and  not  by 
Herder,  who  undoubtedly  contributed  to  this 
tendency,  as  we  shall  see  later.  Goethe  in  a 
little  distich  has  celebrated  this  spiritual 
heritage  of  his  mother:  from  her  came  "my 
joyous  nature  and  love  of  fabling. "  Out  of 
such  maternal  endowment,  then  the  young 
poet  took  his  bent  to  the  Mythus  of  Peoples 
which  will  run  through  his  whole  life  and 
form  the  deepest  strain  of  his  poetical  crea- 
tion. We  shall  find  it  active  in  him  at  the 
start  as  well  as  at  the  very  last  round-up  of 
his  career  (in  the  Second  Part  of  Faust). 

The  mother  of  Goethe  had  also  the  power 
of  literary  expression,  the  gift  of  the  written 
word.  It  is  true  that  she  preferred,  or  said 
she  preferred,  to  talk,  to  prattle,  to  spin  her 


28  GOETHE'S  LIFE -POEM. —PART  FIRST. 

stories  out  of  her  mouth  minted  fresh  from 
her  heart  and  imagination — the  pen-point 
bothered  her,  confining  the  immediate  gush 
of  her  soul  to  such  a  narrow  outlet.  Still  she 
became  quite  a  copious  letter-writer  through 
her  long  life,  and  developed  an  original  epis- 
tolary style,  probably  the  most  original  of 
its  kind  in  German  literature.  Full  of  fan- 
tastic flights  and  humorous  flashes,  all  per- 
fectly easy  and  artless,  she  has  not  to  pump 
for  her  jokes  or  her  radiant  metaphors,  they 
spray  out  over  you  like  an  artesian  fount  up- 
springing  from  nature 's  own  buoyancy.  She 
has  her  special  orthography  which  seems  in- 
born in  her  words,  mirroring  doubtless  the 
popular  accent,  like  the  best  of  Mark 
Twain's  or  Uncle  Remus 's;  let  not  her  mis- 
spellings be  corrected,  as  the  editorial  mind 
is  inclined  to  do  for  sake  of  the  printed  page ; 
they  are  as  native  as  her  speech,  indeed  are 
an  integral  part  of  it.  And  indeed  all  her 
speech  springs  from  the  very  Teutonic  well- 
head, the  pure  unsophisticated  utterance  of 
the  German  woman-soul.  So  the  foreign 
reader  will  feel  through  even  if  quite  unable 
to  catch  many  a  little  nuance  of  the  native 
Frankfort  dialect.  As  to  her  letter  writing, 
she  transmitted  that  gift  also  to  her  boy,  who 
kept  up  the  habit  during  life  and  has  handed 
down  to  the  future  army  of  readers  thou- 


7^   THE  PARENTAL  HOME.  29 

<  • 

sands  upon  thousands  of  samples.  Goethe 's 
early  letters  have  a  good  deal  of  resemblance 
to  those  of  his  mother,  who  retained  her 
buoyant,  metaphorical,  fantastic  style  to  the 
last.  From  this  point  of  view  her  old-age's 
letters  are  often  better  than  those  of  Goethe 
himself  at  the  same  time  of  life,  for  in  his 
correspondence  and  otherwise  he  stiffened 
with  the  years.  Her  sprightly  oddities  seem 
to  have  found  an  echo  in  Bettina's  writings. 
' 'She  was  a  nature, "  said  her  son  sugges- 
tively but  vaguely,  leaving  the  rest  to  be 
filled  out,  and  this  has  been  quite  adequately 
done  by  her  published  letters,  which  have 
been  recently  proclaimed  to  have  their  ac- 
cepted niche  in  the  somewhat  thronged  tem- 
ple of  recent  German  Literature.  In  fact, 
it  is  worth  the  while  for  the  student  of  uni- 
versal writ  to  compare  her  with  two  other 
eminent  epistolary  women  of  Europe,  the 
French  Madam  Sevigny,  and  the  English 
Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montague;  all  three  are 
distinctly  national,  yet  strictly  feminine  too; 
taken  together  they  form  a  very  attractive 
cheery  alcove  in  the  woman's  section  of  Eu- 
ropean Literature. 

The  conception  of  Goethe's  mother  and  of 
her  influence  upon  her  son  would  have  a  huge 
gap  in  it  unless  the  religious  side  of  her  na- 
ture were  emphasized.  In  one  of  her  pious 


30  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

splashes  she  has  thrown  out  a  luminous  con- 
fession of  faith  which  may  be  here  written 
down:  "I  take  joy  in  life,  because  my  lamp 
still  glows;  I  do  not  hunt  out  the  thorns,  but 
snatch  up  every  little  pleasure;  if  the  doors 
are  low,  I  stoop;  if  I  can  get  the  rock  out 
of  my  path,  I  do  it;  if  it  be  too  heavy,  I  go 
around  it;  and  so  I  find  every  day  something 
which  delights  me;  and  then  the  key-stone— 
faith  in  God.7'  So  on  her  uplifting  world- 
view  she  buoyantly  swims  over  all  the  vexa- 
tions of  life;  at  the  same  time  she  has  a  pas- 
sion for  radiating  human  love  on  every  per- 
son who  comes  within  her  range :  "I  hold  all 
people  very  dear,  and  that  is  felt  by  young 
and  old  in  my  presence — I  demoralize  no- 
body, but  try  to  spy  out  the  good  side,  and 
leave  the  bad  side  to  Him  who  created  man 
and  who  understands  the  matter  best" 
(from  a  letter  to  a  boy  who  probably  had  rea- 
son to  appreciate  it).  A  working  theory  of 
life  she  has  thought  out  in  her  woman 's  way, 
and  sprays  it  out  in  iridescent  jets  on  the  at- 
mosphere about  her:  "I  do  everything 
forthright  at  a  gush  taking  the  most  dis- 
agreeable thing  first  always,  and  I  gulp  down 
the  Devil  (with  his  black  thoughts)  without 
staring  at  him  long."  So  the  light-hearted 
woman  has  also  her  battle  with  the  fiend, 
whom  she  gets  rid  of  then  and  there,  when- 


IN  THE  PARENTAL  HOME.  31 

ever  she  meets  Mm,  by  a  miraculous  act  of 
deglutition.  In  this  way  she  too  may  be  said 
to  have  had  her  Philosophy  of  Negation, 
whereby  she  could  negate  the  negative,  deal- 
ing with  it  far  more  simply  but  more  effectu- 
ally than  her  son,  who  probably  never  did 
quite  succeed  in  swallowing  his  Mephisto- 
pheles,  "the  Spirit  that  denies."  Well,  who 
does?  For  it  is  a  characteristic  of  old  Splay- 
foot that  he  will  turn  up  again  after  repeated 
human  engulf ments — may  he  be  accursed! 

Aged  Goethe  remembered  his  mother  well 
in  her  religiosity  (wherein  he  did  not  always 
follow  her  good  example)  and  thus  speaks  of 
her  as  late  as  1824  in  a  letter  to  Zelter,  who 
wanted  one  of  her  epistolary  specimens : 
"Herewith  a  sample  of  my  mother 's  letters 
which  you  desired;  in  it,  as  in  every  line  of 
hers,  the  character  of  a  woman  utters  itself 
who  lived  in  the  fear  of  God  after  the  way 
of  the  Old  Testament,  leading  a  hearty  life 
full  of  trust  in  the  unchangeable  God  of  the 
Folk  and  Family."  She  could  always  cite  a 
comforting  verse  of  the  Bible  for  her  needs — 
her  choice  was  the  ancient  Hebrew  writ, 
greatest  of  all  religious  folk-books;  she  was 
what  the  Germans  call  bibelfest,  ready  at  all 
times  to  apply  a  line  of  Scripture  for  easing 
the  ups  and  downs  of  life,  and  ready  to  fling 
a  bucket  of  water  on  anybody's  Hell-lit 


32  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

tongue.  Completely  inoculated  with  the 
Lutherian  phraseology,  she  imparted  this 
linguistic  trait  to  her  son,  whose  biblical 
turns  of  expression  have  been  often  pointed 
out. 

But  that  which  she  glorified  as  the  chief 
crown  of  her  existence  was  her  motherhood: 
' '  Call  me  mother  for  all  the  rest  of  my  days, 
as  many  as  my  old  age  may  yet  count, "  she 
writes  to  lively  little  Bettina,  "that  is  the  one 
name  which  embraces  all  my  happiness. ' '  So 
she  mothered  that  bright  fantastic  elf  as  her 
own  who  has  so  much  spiritual  kinship  with 
herself;  but  her  chief  maternal  pride  rayed 
out  upon  her  great  son.  Weimar  not  Frank- 
fort was  the  home  of  her  heart ;  no  wonder  she 
exclaims :  ' '  That  place  is  the  one  which  con- 
tains my  all,  everything  which  upon  this 
round  earth  is  dear,  lofty  and  of  value." 
Thus  she  re-lived  her  own  in  his  genius,  with 
many  little  meteoric  scintillations  from  her 
Frankfort  home  in  writ,  word  and  deed, 
transfiguring  the  small  things  of  the  moment 
into  honey-drops  for  all  times  as  it  has  turned 
out — greatly  to  her  surprise  would  this  be,  if 
she  were  living  now.  So  we  regard  her  with 
deep  delight  as  a  genuine  artist  of  life,  espe- 
cially for  her  sex,  building  her  happy  exist- 
ence every  moment  out  of  microscopic  joy- 
cells. 


IN  THE  PARENTAL  HOME.  33 

With  these  traits  before  us  we  can  well  un- 
derstand the  part  which  the  mother  had  in 
the  training  of  Goethe  as  a  poet.  She  was 
only  eighteen  when  he  was  born,  they  grew 
up  as  children  together,  as  playmates  in  the 
sunshine  of  life,  she  leading  the  way  in 
games,  stories,  and  happy-making  caresses. 
And  this  thought  will  rise  to  the  surface: 
through  her  the  son  became  more  deeply  at- 
tached to  women  than  to  his  own  sex;  they 
touched  him  more  deeply  at  the  creative  foun- 
tain of  his  genius,  and  their  influence  upon 
his  life  is  more  innate.  That  strand  of  the 
love  of  woman  runs  through  his  career  from 
start  to  end,  and  on  it  are  strung  all  his 
greatest  works  and  his  pivotal  Epochs.  It 
has  often  been  remarked  that  his  female  char- 
acters are  of  a  higher  order  than  his  male, 
he  seems  to  possess  in  his  own  soul  a  better 
elemental  stuff  out  of  which  he  moulds  them 
in  his  best  moments.  Through  that  mother 
flowed  the  influences,  both  pre-natal  and  post- 
natal, which  brought  him  his  genius,  arid 
twinned  it  inseparably  with  the  woman-soul 
to  which  he  was  so  responsive  in  act  and  ut- 
terance, and  whose  last  message  is  his  last 
words  in  the  Second  Part  of  Faust. 

To  this  domestic  group  of  children — mother 
and  boy — must  be  added  a  daughter,  Cor- 
nelia, by  name,  only  fifteen  months  and  a  few 


34  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

days  younger  than  Goethe.  She  had  a  monop- 
oly of  the  homely  element  of  the  family, 
while  her  brother  from  childhood  was  noted 
for  his  unique  physical  beauty.  She  scowled 
in  irregular  broken  lineaments,  and  it  would 
seem  that  her  mind  was  featured  somewhat 
upon  her  unattractive  face.  Long  afterward 
the  poet  speaks  very  gently  of  her  temper, 
but  hints  her  lack  of  beauty  and  its  spiritual 
influence.  Cornelia  evidently  bore  so  deep  a 
spite  against  dame  Nature  for  this  injustice 
that  the  sense  of  a  born  wrong  passed  into 
her  disposition  and  there  took  fixed  lodg- 
ment. One  of  her  exclamations  in  her  diary 
is  still  preserved :  "I  would  give  everything, 
if  I  were  only  handsome."  Still  she  found 
an  admirer,  one  a  good  deal  uglier  than  her- 
self, according  to  report  and  his  picture— 
and  she  married  him.  Still  she  belonged  to 
and  grew  up  with  that  children's  group  of 
three  in  the  Goethe  household,  and  was  deeply 
attached  to  her  brother  whose  gift  she  appre- 
ciated and  whose  early  productions  she  en- 
couraged. 

There  was  another  strong  bond  between 
them:  their  common,  though  secret  revolt 
against  their  father,  to  which  the  mother 
rather  leaned,  though  always  seeking  to  be 
the  mediator,  and  having  to  perform  the  con- 
trary parts  of  a  doting  mama  and  a  dutiful 


GOETHE'S  FATHER.  35 

.*• 

wife.  This  father  furnished  also  his  contri- 
bution to  Goethe's  nature  and  discipline  and 
must  be  looked  at,  for  chiefly  through  his  un- 
happy pedagogy  his  boy  was  trained  to  be 
the  contradictory  imp  who  foreshadowed  in 
himself  the  evolving  Mephistopheles. 


II. 

Goethe's  Father. 

Having  sought  to  win  some  idea  of  how 
the  poet  was  mothered,  we  must  also  take  a 
peep  at  how  he  was  fathered — a  much  more 
superficial  matter  and  hence  easier.  The 
son  has  sent  down  to  us  a  brief  glance  in  a 
versicle :  ' '  From  my  father  I  get  my  stature, 
and  the  earnest  conduct  of  life."  His  phys- 
ical body  and  his  methodical  habit  are,  then, 
his  paternal  heritage — worth  something  in- 
deed, but  quite  external  in  comparison  with 
heirdom  of  his  mother. 

Johan  Caspar  Goethe  was  twenty-one  years 
older  than  his  wife,  more  than  double  her 
age,  when  he  married  her  .  If  we  add  twenty 
or  even  ten  years  to  both,  the  difference  be- 
tween them  would  not  be  by  any  means  so 
great.  But  she  was  a  mere  frolicking  girl  of 
seventeen  at  her  marriage,  and  he  was  a 
middle-aged  man  of  thirty-eight,  crystallized 


36  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

in  habit  and  thought,  very  crystallized  in- 
deed, yet  a  worthy  character  and  not  without 
affection.  He  was  wealthy  for  the  time,  had 
considerable  scholarship  with  a  bent  toward 
literature;  moreover  he  had  studied  law  and 
was  decidedly  imbued  with  formal  legality. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  he  was  strongly  im- 
pressed with  his  right  of  authority  in  his 
family.  This  he  found  abundant  opportunity 
to  exercise,  as  he  had  no  economic  occupa- 
tion but  lived  from  his  money.  The  result 
was  a  secret  opposition,  indeed  a  sort  of  con- 
spiracy on  the  part  of  his  children  against 
his  domination.  Such  a  situation  is  found 
often  enough  in  the  household ;  but  that  which 
rendered  the  present  case  worse  was  Caspar 
Goethe's  undue  love  of  pedagogy.  He  be- 
came the  teacher  of  his  children,  and  played 
the  stern  schoolmaster  to  them  during  the 
day.  The  result  was  that  the  parent  was 
sunk  in  the  pedagogue,  and  the  home  was 
turned  into  a  drilling  seminary,  as  far  as  he 
was  concerned.  Moreover  he  wished  his  boy 
to  follow  his  profession  and  to  be  a  jurist; 
but  the  son  felt  in  his  heart  a  decided  aversion 
to  be  like  his  father.  Even  more  rebellious 
was  the  daughter  Cornelia  who  now  had  two 
grievances  on  her  hands:  against  Nature 
and  against  parent. 

It  should  be  noted  as  a  part  of  Goethe's 


GOETHE'S  FATHER.  37 

,£• 

early  education,  though  an  unintended  part 
that  he  was  already  trained  in  the  family  to 
a  strong  protest  against  'transmitted  author- 
ity. His  father  was  unconsciously  develop- 
ing in  the  son  a  secret  resistance  to  the  ex- 
istent order  which  will  in  time  break  out  in 
action  somewhat,  but  far  more  in  mighty  ex- 
pression. The  young  mother  was  also  put 
to  school  under  her  husband  and  compelled 
to  learn  Italian,  music,  and  other  things  in 
which  she  had  little  interest.  He  was  a  great 
stickler  for  principles,  and  clung  to  the  reg- 
ular routine,  while  his  three  pupils  built  a 
little  world  of  their  own  from  which  he  was 
excluded. 

Still  there  was  a  positive  side  to  this  in- 
struction which  must  be  duly  noted.  Young 
Goethe  learned  to  read  and  wrrite  Latin  with 
ease  and  retained  the  acquisition  through 
life.  He  took  French  lessons,  to  which  Ital- 
ian and  English  were  added,  and  besides  he 
tackled  Hebrew.  He  had  a  tilt  at  Greek, 
probably  without  much  result,  for  in  later 
life  he  renewed  again  and  again  his  onsets. 
Goethe  took  pleasure  in  learning  languages 
and  had  a  gift  in  this  line ;  here  doubtless  lay 
the  most  congenial  field  of  his  father's  in- 
struction. Still  the  limit  was  drawn  upon 
this  domain  too :  he  could  do  nothing  with  the 
formal  grammar  of  a  tongue,  it  was  detest- 


38  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

able  like  all  formalism — perchance  because 
it  was  quite  too  like  his  teacher — though  he 
loved  to  read,  prattle,  and  even  write  in 
strange  idioms,  especially  during  his  youth. 
Worse  still  he  hated  mathematics.  But  the 
best  school  for  the  aspiring  lad  was  his  fa- 
ther 's  well-stored  private  library  in  which  he 
found  many  volumes  of  poetry  and  general 
knowledge.  The  German  folk-books  he  de- 
voured, "the  whole  set  even  to  the  Wander- 
ing Jew"  as  he  declares,  though  this  act 
seemingly  had  to  be  done  outside  the  house. 
Of  his  own  accord  he  seems  to  have  picked  up 
a  knowledge  of  Jew-German  from  the  ghetto 
of  Frankfort,  and  he  has  left  us  a  written 
specimen.  Nor  is  to  be  omitted  from  the  pic- 
ture the  stiff  pedagogical  parent  playing  the 
dancing-master  to  his  children,  and  even  if 
a  little  old  and  rigid,  giving  them  lessons  in 
the  art  of  Terpsichore  to  the  tune  of  a  fiddle. 
But  the  home-drill  continued :  Goethe,  with 
one  brief  exception,  never  attended  a  public 
school  with  its  equalizing  tendency.  Such  an 
education  made  for  evoking  his  innate  aris- 
tocratic disposition,  which  clung  to  him 
through  great  political  upheavals  which 
jolted  his  century. 

Characteristic  from  this  point  of  view  are 
some  expressions  in  his  earliest  known  letter 
written  before  he  was  fifteen.  The  vouth  feels 


GOETHE'S  FATHER.  39 

himself  called  upon  to  confess  his  defects  of 
character:  "I  am  somewhat  irascible  .  .  . 
am  very  impatient,  and  do  not  like  to  remain 
long  in  uncertainty.  Further  I  am  accus- 
tomed to  giving  command,  yet  when  I  have 
nothing  to  say,  I  can  be  silent."  Young 
Wolfgang  ruled  his  mother  and  sister,  and 
doubtless  often  circumvented  his  father. 
Later  in  life  Goethe  failed  not  to  manifest 
this  same  trait  of  domination  which  in  his 
father  caused  his  youthful  revolt.  Even  the 
autocratic  Duke  of  Weimar  called  him  a 
tyrant,  and  sometimes  played  the  tyrant  to 
the  tyrant.  Suggestive  is  the  fact  that  when 
he  comes  to  have  a  son,  he  will  largely  repeat 
his  father's  deed  to  him,  and  will  largely  get 
back  from  that  son  what  he  himself  did  to  his 
father.  In  his  Autobiography  he  confesses 
that  he  had  inherited  the  parental  peda- 
gogical propensity — a  good  thing  for  us  by 
the  way,  as  his  desire  to  teach  was  the  source 
of  many  of  his  happiest  reported  conversa- 
tions. One  of  his  youthful  companions  long 
afterwards  said  of  him:  "We  were  always 
the  lackeys. ' '  With  this  superiority  was  pre- 
cociously developed  his  critical  faculty :  ' '  We 
have  many  blockheads  in  our  city"  he  de- 
clares scornfully  with  expanded  illustration 
in  a  letter  written  at  the  age  of  fourteen. 
This  trait  will  not  fail  to  unfold  with  the 


40  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

years  to  its  haughtiest  potence  in  the  Mephis- 
tophelean scoff. 

Goethe  began  poetizing  early,  and  we  are 
surprised  to  learn  that  the  juridical  father 
encouraged  him  in  his  youthful  verses,  as 
well  as  his  poetical  mother.  Only  one  of 
these  boyish  attempts  has  survived  and  beck- 
ons to  us  in  his  works  under  the  daring  title : 
Christ's  Descent  to  Hell.  The  Bible  furnished 
him  chiefly  with  subjects ;  we  hear  of  an  epos 
called  Joseph  and  His  Brethren,  and  a  drama 
on  Belsliazzar,  with  some  other  scriptural 
themes.  Thus  his  youth's  practice  was  to 
transform  the  supreme  religious  folk-book 
into  various  styles  of  poetry,  having  his  own 
kin  mainly  as  audience.  Two  supreme  things 
he  caught  up  from  this  exercise :  how  his  Teu- 
tonic people  looked  upon  the  divine  govern- 
ment of  the  world,  and  how  they  uttered  the 
same  in  their  most  exalted  speech.  Through 
the  Bible  Goethe  may  not  have  become  very 
well  acquainted  with  his  God,  but  he  did  come 
to  know  his  folk  in  its  profoundest  conscious- 
ness and  in  its  most  universal  expression. 
Later  with  a  change  of  mood,  he  flung  into 
the  flames  these  considerable  works  of  his 
boyhood,  which  "  could  not  otherwise  atone 
for  their  youthful  sins  than  through  fire,"  as 
he  says  of  them  in  a  burst  of  Satanic  damna- 
tion. 


GOETHE'S  FATHER.  41 

In  the  Autobiography  Goethe  has  narrated 
quite  fully  a  number  of  occurrences  in  his 
youth  which  he,  looking  back  from  advanced 
life,  deemed  formative  for  his  career.  He 
puts  stress  upon  a  puppet-theater,  a  present 
of  the  grandmother  to  the  children,  which  he 
holds,  "  exercised  the  faculties  of  invention 
and  representation,  as  well  as  the  power  of 
imagination  and  a  certain  technical  skill. ' '  In 
his  Apprenticeship  of  Wilhelm  Meister  he 
has  dwelt  iipon  the  same  circumstance  with 
a  rather  tiresome  fullness.  The  earthquake 
at  Lisbon  (November  1,  1755),  with  its  awful 
and  sudden  destruction  of  life  and  property, 
is  mentioned  as  having  "shaken  the  boy's 
repose  of  mind,  to  the  bottom  for  the  first 
time."  This  mental  shattering  was  re- 
ligious :  ' '  God,  the  Creator  and  upholder  of 
Heaven  and  Earth,  merciful  and  wise  accord- 
ing to  the  first  Article  of  Faith,  had  over- 
whelmed the  just  and  unjust  with  like  de- 
struction, and  thus  had  shown  himself  by  no 
means  so  paternal."  This  is  perhaps  the  old 
Mephistophelean  Goethe  of  sixty  years  rather 
than  the  boy  of  six.  But  he  goes  on:  "In 
vain  the  young  soul  tried  to  recover  itself 
from  these  impressions"  which,  however, 
even  the  learned  clergy  could  not  do.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  this  terrible  calamity  pro- 
duced at  the  time  a  great  religious  question- 


42  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

ing  throughout  Europe ;  there  was  a  theolog- 
ical upheaval  as  well  as  physical ;  a  vast  out- 
pour of  penitential  sermons  and  exhortations 
to  conversion  deluged  the  literature  of  the 
time,  not  sparing  Frankfort,  and  in  this  ex- 
citement the  child  Goethe  might  have  shared. 
Voltaire  seized  on  the  unearthly  horror  to 
ridicule  the  Leibnizian  optimism,  and  Eous- 
seau  entered  the  lists  against  him — these  two 
writers  of  French  being  then  the  most  widely 
read  authors  in  Europe. 

Another  great  historic  event  which  became 
inwoven  with  Goethe's  youth  was  the  Seven 
Years'  War  (1756-63).  Frederick  the  Great 
and  Prussia  had  arisen  in  the  North,  and  rep- 
resented on  the  whole  the  Teutonic  against 
the  Latin  world,  with  their  respective  cul- 
tures and  religions.  Frankfort  lay  some- 
what on  the  border,  and  in  its  sympathies 
was  deeply  divided.  Members  of  the  same 
family  took  different  sides,  and  the  feud 
seemed  to  become  all  the  more  bitter  because 
of  the  kinship.  The  same  phenomenon  was 
often  witnessed  during  our  own  Civil  War  in 
the  Border  States.  Now  the  main  point  of 
the  new  experience  is  that  young  Goethe  saw 
and  felt  this  political  rent  enter  and  cleave 
his  own  domestic  environment — his  father 
was  a  strong  Prussian  sympathizer,  while  his 
mother's  family  (the  Textors)  stood  emphat- 


GOETHE'S  FATHER.  43 

.4- 

ically  on  the  other  side  and  possessed  polit- 
ical power — the  maternal  grandfather  being 
the  city's  highest  official.  Here,  then,  the  boy 
first  felt  the  shrill  dissonance  of  politics, 
which  ever  afterward  jarred  in  his  soul. 
Still  he  at  present  sided  with  Prussia,  with 
his  father  and  with  the  national  feeling  which 
was  mightily  evoked  by  Frederick's  vic- 
tories. 

The  overwhelming  defeat  of  the  French 
and  Imperialists  at  Rossbach  (November, 
1757)  showed  that  a  new  power  had  dawned 
upon  Europe.  A  month  later  came  the  sec- 
ond dazzling  triumph  of  Prussia  at  Leuthen, 
followed  by  the  capitulation  of  Breslau.  A 
new  power  had  dawned  upon  Europe,  a  new 
German  hero  had  arisen,  who  was  saluted  by 
the  fervid  patriots  as  the  fresh  epiphany  of 
ancient  Arminius  again  battling  for  Teutonia 
against  Roma.  Goethe  was  perhaps  not  too 
immature  to  feel  during  these  years  the  re- 
juvenation of  Fatherland,  though  he  was  af- 
terward not  very  enthusiastic  over  it  for  va- 
rious reasons.  One  of  these  may  have  been 
the  memory  of  that  violent  quarrel  between 
his  father  Goethe  and  his  grandfather  Textor 
at  a  family  festival  wrhen  son-in-law  and  fa- 
ther-in-law drew  sharp  weapons  on  each 
other,  with  enormous  loss  of  temper  but  no 
loss  of  blood — very  properly  not  reported  by 


44  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

Goethe  himself  in  the  Autobiography,  but 
dug  out  of  the  diary  of  a  cotemporary  phy- 
sician by  the  name  of  Senckendorf  who 
writes:  "Textor  threw  a  knife  at  Goethe 
who  drew  a  sword.  Pastor  Starck  (another 
son-in-law  present)  fell  sick  from  fright  at 
the  scene, "  and  hence  probably  the  doctor 
had  to  be  called  who  probed  for  the  cause  of 
the  strange  illness.  (See  the  account  with 
the  citation  in  Loeper's  edition  of  Dichtung 
und  Wahrheit,  notes  to  Second  Book,  p. 
272.) 

Another  incident  of  this  time  was  the  en- 
trance of  French  soldiers  into  Frankfort ;  one 
of  the  officers,  the  king's  lieutenant,  was 
quartered  in  the  Goethe  house  for  many 
months.  Much  discomfort  and  anxiety  re- 
sulted, especially  the  father  was  disturbed  by 
the  continual  presence  of  his  foes,  and  could 
not  attend  to  his  pedagogical  work  with  the 
same  strictness.  Young  Goethe  was  given 
greater  freedom,  or  took  it,  and  picked  up 
many  a  forbidden  experience  which  he  has 
duly  recorded.  When  the  war  with  its  ex- 
citements had  ended,  another  stirring  event 
for  the  old  city  took  place :  the  coronation  of 
the  Emperor  in  1764.  This  wre  may  let  pass 
as  an  empty  pageant,  though  set  forth  by 
Goethe  with  some  detail  in  his  Autobiogra- 
phy. The  Holy  Roman  Empire  was  at  the 


GOETHE'S  FATHER.  45 

time  in  decay  and    some    years    afterward 
gave  up  the  ghost. 

But  the  pivotal  fact  at  this  point  is  that 
the  lover  Goethe  weaves  through  the  cere- 
monies the  romance  of  his  first  love,  at  least 
his  first  recorded  love,  and  thus  starts  the 
deepest  and  most  abiding  strand  of  his  whole 
career,  both  in  life  and  literature.  (See  Fifth 
Book  of  his  Dichtung  und  Wakrheit.)  It  is 
evident  by  the  warmth  of  his  style  and  the 
dramatic  fullness  of  his  account  that  the  old 
poet  deemed  the  affair  the  start  of  an  era  in 
his  development.  For  Goethe  is  supremely 
the  poet  of  Love,  with  its  conflicts  bringing 
defeat  and  triumph,  as  well  as  the  keenest 
joys  and  the  intensest  sorrows.  In  this  role 
we  have  already  designated  him  by  a  special 
name,  which  will  keep  rising  to  the  surface 
throughout  his  life,  especially  at  its  epochal 
turns.  Phileros  is  now  to  step  forth  on  the 
stage,  a  name  taken  from  one  of  his  own  char- 
acters, not  well  known  or  rightly  appreciated 
hitherto,  but  who  is  now  to  be  promoted  to 
his  true  place  as  the  central  hero,  not  of  a 
single  drama  or  epos,  but  of  the  poet's  total 
life-poem. 


46  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 


III. 

Goethe  Preludes  as  PhUeros. 

Sitting  at  the  table  of  an  inn,  among  his 
youthful  companions,  who  were  having  a  lit- 
tle festival,  Goethe,  then  fourteen  years  old 
or  thereabouts,  was  exercising  his  talent  in 
making  verses  for  the  occasion.  This  theme 
was  assigned  to  him:  "Compose  us  a  love- 
letter  in  poetry  which  a  bashful  maiden  might 
write  to  a  young  fellow,  declaring  her  pas- 
sion. "  Said  the  juvenile  bard:  "Nothing 
is  easier  than  that,"  as  if  already  an  old 
hand  in  such  business,  and  on  the  spot  set 
about  the  task.  "At  once  I  called  vividly  be- 
fore my  mind  the  situation,  should  a  pretty 
girl  be  actually  inclined  to  me,  and  begin  to 
reveal  it  in  prose  or  verse."  Great  was  the 
the  triumph  of  Wolfgang  in  the  opinion  of 
his  young  friends ;  one  of  them  ordered  right 
off  a  bottle  of  wine,  but,  instead  of  the  reg- 
ular waiters,  behold  a  divine  appearance  in 
the  eyes  of  the  thrilled,  adolescent  Goethe, 
whom  he  thus  wreathes  in  a  halo  of  glory: 
"A  maiden  steps  in  of  uncommon,  yea,  con- 
sidering her  surroundings,  of  incredible 
beauty.  A  little  cap  sat  so  neatly  upon  her 
little  head  which  a  slender  throat  joined  very 


GOETHE  PRELUDES  AS  PHILEROS.  47 

.*• 

gracefully  to  neck  and  shoulders.  Everything 
on  her  seemed  carefully  chosen,  and  we  could 
regard  the  whole  form  the  more  at  leisure, 
since  the  attention  was  no  longer  drawn  and 
fixed  on  her  lovely  mouth  alone  and  on  her 
quiet,  true  eyes,"  as  she  turned  her  back  to 
bring  the  wine.  So  the  Goddess  has  come 
down,  and  appears  for  the  first  time  to  the 
youthful  poetizer — with  what  result! 

' '  The  form  of  this  maiden  pursued  me  over 
every  path  from  that  moment  on ;  it  was  the 
first  permanent  impression  which  any  woman 
had  ever  made  upon  me."  Such,  then,  we  may 
consider  the  starting-point  of  Goethe  the 
lover,  as  he  himself  evidently  looks  at  it  in 
that  light.  Still  further:  "As  I  could  find 
no  pretext  to  see  her  at  home,  I  went  to 
church  and  spied  out  where  she  sat;  so  1 
feasted  my  eyes  on  her  during  the  long  Pro- 
testant service.  Still  I  dared  not  address 
her,"  till  the  suitable  occasion  came.  Thus 
the  poet  portrays  himself  falling  into  the 
toils  just  when  he  had  wrought  himself  up  to 
a  high  pitch  of  imagination  in  composing  the 
fictitious  love-letter ;  in  his  fervor  he  pitches 
from  image  to  reality  at  one  plunge,  and 
sinks  suddenly  overhead.  To  be  sure  the 
Goddess  appears  at  the  right  moment  in  all 
the  magic  of  her  beauty  to  the  impressionable 
youth  still  reeling  from  his  poetic  paroxysm. 


48  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

Now  it  was  so  brought  about  by  the  same  set 
of  mischievous  boys  that  the  ardent  young 
poet  was  called  on  for  another  poetic  epistle 
in  a  kind  of  comedy  which  they  were  playing 
to  make  game  of  one  of  their  crowd.  Thus 
Goethe  was  now  to  write  a  love-letter  when 
deeply  in  love,  instead  of  the  reverse  as  be- 
fore; this  gave  just  the  opportunity  to  pour 
out  his  present  feelings  into  verse.  Neces- 
sarily the  composition  came  under  the  eye  of 
the  maiden,  whose  name  was  Gretchen  (Mag- 
gie), and  who  was  secretly  its  object.  She 
read  it  half  aloud  and  very  tenderly,  when  she 
said :  * '  That  is  very  fine,  but  pity  that  it  is 
not  put  to  a  better,  to  a  true  use."  Then  at 
the  passionate  urgency  of  the  lover  she  signed 
her  name  to  the  letter,  as  if  it  were  her  own. 
The  outcome  was  a  mutual  confession  and 
then  a  quick  separation  to  avoid  inquisitive 
eyes. 

Whereupon  the  old  poet,  in  his  Autobiog- 
raphy, looking  back,  through  more  than  forty 
years,  makes  the  following  reflection:  "The 
first  inclinations  of  love  in  an  incorrupted 
youth  take  decidedly  a  spiritual  turn.  Na- 
ture seems  to  wish  that  one  sex  shall  perceive 
by  the  senses  the  Good  and  the  Beautiful  in 
the  other.  And  so  through  the  sight  of  this 
girl — through  my  attachment  to  her — arose 
a  new  world  of  the  Beautiful  and  the  Excel- 


GOETHE  PRELUDES  AS  PHILEROS.  49 

lent. ' '  In  such  way  again  he  emphasizes  this 
epoch-making  occurrence  in  his  life,  and  en- 
forces his  training  through  love  of  which  the 
present  is  the  earliest  instance  according  to 
his  record. 

The  question  comes  up,  how  is  it  that  Goe- 
the is  led  to  recall  and  portray  this  affair  of 
heart  in  so  much  detail,  with  such  deep  in- 
terest, and  with  so  great  artistic  delight?  The 
fact  is,  when  he  wrote  these  earlier  books  of 
his  Autobiography  he  was  again  in  love  with 
a  young  maiden — Minna  Herzlieb.  She  in- 
spired in  him  all  the  strength  of  his  youthful 
passion  for  Gretchen,  though  he  was  hover- 
ing around  sixty.  It  was  a  hopeless  attach- 
ment, but  tormented  him  for  years.  In  ac- 
cord with  his  method  of  self -relief  he  threw 
off  his  love-pain  into  literature.  No  less  than 
three  of  his  larger  works  sprang  from  his 
passion  for  Minna  Herzlieb — Pandora,  Elec- 
tive Affinities,  and  the  Autobiography — be- 
sides smaller  effusions.  But  the  wound  con- 
tinues bleeding  for  years ;  as  he  himself  inti- 
mates, it  shuns  all  healing,  the  heart  fears  to 
get  well.  So  it  medicines  itself  by  literary 
utterance,  as  his  wont  was  in  all  his  amatory 
catastrophes. 

But  the  novel  of  Gretchen  is  not  yet  ended, 
on  the  contrary  many  little  incidents  of  lov- 
ing talk  and  action  are  dwelt  upon  with  a  pe- 


50  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

culiar  relish.  This  Gretchen  is  also  shown 
at  the  spinning-wheel,  like  the  Gretchen  in 
Faust.  Promenades,  poems,  boat-rides  are 
all  narrated  in  a  radiant  afterglow  by  the  old 
man  rehabilitating  his  prophetic  youth.  The 
girl  had  aspiration,  she  wished  to  learn,  she 
would  go  to  the  university,  "if  she  were  a 
boy."  The  lover  was  not  slow  to  catch  the 
hint  and  explained  many  things  about  the 
coronation  ceremonies  then  taking  place 
which  she  did  not  understand.  Upon  this 
point  a  citation  may  be  made  which  thrills  a 
chord  of  Goethe's  entire  life:  "A  young 
couple  whom  nature  has  in  any  degree  formed 
harmoniously  can  find  nothing  which  tends 
to  a  more  beautiful  union  than  when  the 
maiden  is  eager  to  learn  and  the  youth  is 
eager  to  teach.  Such  a  relation  becomes  as 
deep-reaching  as  agreeable.  She  sees  in  him 
the  creator  of  her  spiritual  existence,  and  he 
sees  in  her  a  creature  who  ascribes  her  com- 
pletion not  to  nature  or  chance  or  a  one-sided 
effort  but  to  a  common  will,  and  this  recip- 
rocal activity  is  so  sweet  that  we  do  not  won- 
der at  the  stories  of  the  old  and  new  Abelard" 
with  his  sweet  teachable  Eloisa. 

Then  occurs  the  stroke  of  destiny  which 
separates  the  lovers  forever.  Some  of  their 
remote  companions  had  been  guilty  of  a  crim- 
inal act — nothing  less  than  forgery.  Investi- 


GOETHE  PRELUDES  AS  PHILEROS.  51 


y 

gation  by  the  authorities  takes  place ;  Goethe, 
though  innocent,  gets  involved  through  his 
association  with  bad  company;  all  the  hid- 
den doings  of  his  love  episode  are  brought  to 
light ;  Gretchen  is  questioned  and  found  guilt- 
less, but  quits  the  city  at  once.  On  being  ex- 
amined about  her  relation  to  her  devoted 
swain  she  answers :  "I  always  regarded  him 
as  a  child,  my  inclination  for  him  was  truly 
that  of  a  sister. "  This  response,  being  re- 
ported to  the  youth  who  was  lying  ill  through 
the  transaction,  went  far  toward  curing  him 
of  his  agony.  "I  found  it  unendurable  that 
a  girl,  at  most  a  few  years  older  than  myself, 
wT>uld  take  me  for  a  child. "  For  was  he  not 
a  full  fledged  adolescent?  Still  he  could  not 
for  a  long  time  get  rid  of  that  image  which 
had  given  him  so  much  delight  and  so  much 
woe.  The  counterstroke  of  love  is  now  first 
felt  by  him  in  all  its  affliction,  often  to  be  re- 
peated hereafter.  He  would  not  allow  her 
name  to  pass  his  lips,  "  still  I  could  not  ban- 
ish the  bad  habit  of  thinking  about  her,  of 
recalling  her  form,  her  ways,  her  looks,"  and 
the  rest.  Very  unwillingly  the  old  remem- 
berer dismisses  her,  for  she  is  present  to  him 
in  a  new  shape  which  also  refuses  to  quit  its 
dancing  before  him. 

A  careful  German  investigator  has  searched 
the  criminal  archives  of  Frankfort  for  that 


52  ^GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

time  and  found  no  trace  of  what  is  here  re- 
corded by  Goethe.  Hence  the  truth  of  the  oc- 
currence with  this  early  Gretchen  has  been 
questioned.  It  is  certainly  a  little  novel  and 
is  put  together  with  much  art.  Founded  on 
fact  it  doubtless  was,  and  here  we  may  recall 
Goethe's  own  dictum:  All  the  occurrences 
there  told  took  place,  but  not  in  the  way  or 
order  in  which  they  are  told.  Actual  life  fur- 
nished the  crude  material  which  he  wrought 
over  into  art.  As  he  describes  it,  the  poetic 
function  is  to  idealize  the  reality.  The  whole 
narrative  is,  accordingly,  a  little  romantic 
episode  bubbling  up  on  the  stream  of  life. 
And  this  will  indicate  the  character  of  his  en- 
tire book  of  Autobiography :  the  prosaic  back- 
ground of  a  human  career  is  given  with  its 
epochal  effervescences  into  poetry.  Such  are 
the  two  strands  of  man's  existence  in  its 
ceaseless  onward  flow,  fact  and  fiction,  and 
Goethe  will  put  both  into  his  work  making  a 
new  specimen  of  literature. 

It  may  here  be  premised  that  there  will  be 
quite  a  number  of  such  novelettes  of  love 
strung  through  his  record,  with  their  setting 
of  merely  historic  or  biographic  occurrences. 
The  stories  of  Frederika  and  Lili  and  others 
will  be  introduced  in  the  same  way.  Of  a  sud- 
den from  unseen  depths  life  wells  up.  into  a 
rainbow  fountain  of  romance.  And  with 


GOETHE  PRELUDES  AS  PHILEROS.  53 

Goethe  love  had  something  elemental  in  it; 
unexpectedly  it  would  heave  forth  from  the 
very  sources  of  his  being,  and  make  him  vi- 
brate to  its  throbs  like  an  earthquake,  till  it 
found  vent  in  some  mighty  volcanic  eruption. 
Then  for  a  while  he  could  be  quiescent  again, 
and  sink  down  to  the  steady  commonplace  of 
daily  routine.  When  we  come  to  understand 
him,  we  have  to  regard  love's  upheaval  in 
him  as  akin  to  a  phenomenon  of  nature,  often 
terrible,  even  shocking  to  the  moral  sense,  as 
many  good  people  were  shocked  morally  as 
well  as  physically  by  the  Lisbon  earthquake. 
Yet  that  too  has  ultimately  to  be  taken  as  a 
part  of  God,  if  He  be  the  creative  All,  per- 
chance a  part  unexplained  of  the  moral  order 
of  the  Universe. 

Goethe's  loves,  then,  are  the  fundamental 
question  of  his  life  and  of  his  poetry.  They 
furnish  the  point  on  which  he  is  most  gener- 
ally assailed,  and  which  surely  is  the  most 
difficult  to  understand.  To  \ienounce  him  or 
to  defend  him  seems  equally  inadequate.  I 
wonder  if  we  cannot  let  him  be  as  he  is  and 
try  to  comprehend  him  as  a  unique  human 
phenomenon  both  in  life  and  literature.  The 
world  is  still  grappling  with  the  problem  of 
him,  often  in  bitter  hate,  often  in  hot  defense, 
then  again  in  an  uncertain  curiosity.  At  any 
rate  the  man  himself  recounting  his  own  ca- 


54  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

reer,  has  struck  its  deepest  and  most  per- 
sistent strain  in  this  story  of  the  somewhat 
shadowy  Gretchen.  It  is  his  keynote,  sounded 
now  at  the  start  and  winding  through  and  in 
its  way  controlling  his  life's  long  and  varied 
symphony.  So  we  pick  it  up  and  dwell  on  it 
just  here,  -as  it  will  recur  again  and  again  in 
many  different  forms  till  the  end. 

Accordingly  we  shall  give  to  Goethe,  play- 
ing this  deepest  and  most  determining  part 
of  his  varied  life's  drama  all  his  days,  a  spe- 
cial name — Phileros,  the  lover  of  love,  taken 
from  one  of  his  own  dramatic  characters  (in 
his  Pandora).  For  Goethe  not  only  loves, 
but  loves  love,  turning  it  back  on  itself  and 
making  it  an  object  of  itself,  making  it  self- 
end  and  not  merely  an  end  unto  something 
else.  This  was  done  not  simply  on  purpose, 
by  an  act  of  conscious  volition,  but  was  the 
spontaneous  upburst  of  his  profoundest  un- 
der-self, truly  a  manifestation  of  the  secret 
springs  of  Nature  gathered  possibly  for  un- 
told ages  far  down  in  her  fathomless  bosom. 
Goethe,  then,  is  a  lover  indeed,  but  likewise 
a  lover  of  Love;  of  such  new  personality  he 
has  to  deliver  the  message,  *quite  different 
from  any  thing  which  had  gone  before. 

So  we  shall  often  have  occasion  to  spy  out 
subtly  Phileros,  the  most  central  and  dis- 
tinctive of  all  Goethe's  characters.  Let  not 


GOETHE  PRELUDES  AS  PHILEROS.  55 

the  watchful  reader  slight  him — the  most 
spontaneous  and  formative  energy,  indeed  the 
very  soul,  of  Goethe's  genius.  Undoubtedly 
we  have  to  construe  this  one  essential  char- 
acter out  of  numerous  manifestations  of  it 
scattered  along  the  poet's  days,  and  make  it 
move  forth  through  his  life-poem.  Love 
would  dart  down  upon  him  quite  unawares, 
like  a  God  from  Olympus,  at  first  perchance 
tickling  him,  then  scourging  him,  yea  crush- 
ing him  to  death's  point  almost,  yet  thereby 
renewing  him  and  rehearing  him  for  a  fresh 
productive  spell.  In  fact  Goethe  gets  old  a 
dozen  times,  whatever  be  his  years,  but  on 
the  last  edge  downward  into  hopeless  senility, 
his  guardian  spirit  plucks  him  out  and  then 
plunges  him  into  the  fountain  of  love  in 
which  his  genius  is  veritably  re-born,  and 
starts  again  singing  the  song  of  its  youth 
with  all  its  original  power. 

And  now  we  may  listen  to  a  little  blast 
from  the  other  side.  Anti-Phileros  has  not 
failed  to  insinuate  that  this  so-called  first  love 
already  indicates  some  previous  experience 
in  the  same  line  on  the  part  of  the  guileless 
adolescent  of  fourteen  years,  gifted  certainly 
with  a  strong  amatory  pre-disposition.  In 
that  love-song  how  could  he  hit  the  nail  so 
pat  on  the  head  if  his  were  a  state  of  paradi- 
saical ignorance?  Next  our  celibate  Mephis- 


56  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM --PART  FIRST. 

topheles,  the  hater  of  love  and  the  lover  of 
hate,  squirts  a  dirty  jet  of  inuendos  upon  the 
fair  maiden  Gretchen,  whose  ideal  vesture, 
given  her  so  lovingly  by  the  poet,  gets  badly 
besmirched,  as  she  vanishes  from  our  view. 
Well,  her  company  was  not  the  best,  it  was  a 
bad  lot  of  boys,  even  criminals  among  them, 
and  Goethe  conceals  not  the  fact.  Still  her 
fascinating  figure  stays  and  is  going  to  stay 
as  preluding  the  very  soul  of  Phileros  and 
starting  the  long  line  of  fair  women  whose 
presence  had  the  power  of  tapping  the  deep- 
est sources  of  his  Muse  and  of  re-creating  his 
genius. 


IV. 

'At  the  University  of  Leipzig. 

We  have  seen  that  Goethe  already  in  his 
boyish  days  had  made  himself  a  general  vers- 
ifier for  occasions  in  his  family  and  among 
Ms  youthful  companions;  at  Frankfort  he 
had  become  young  Johannes  the  rhymer. 
This  trait  he  will  carry  with  him  to  Leipzig 
as  student  of  the  University  and  will  continue 
it  through  life.  The  reality  about  him  and 
his  own  experiences  he  had  the  innate  bent 
to  turn  into  verse  on  the  spot ;  so  he  calls  his 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  LEIPZIG.  57 

.4- 

poetic  productions  generally  poems  for  oc- 
casions. On  the  side  of  expression,  then,  his 
central  life-strand  is  made  up  of  a  long  chain 
of  poems,  beginning  quite  with  his  infantile 
lispings  and  ending  only  with  the  cessation 
of  speech  itself.  The  autobiographer  thus 
speaks  of  his  earliest  aspiration:  "I  had  in 
mind  (as  a  boy)  to  produce  something  extra- 
ordinary ;  but  what  it  was  to  be  about,  would 
not  quite  clear  up.  .  .  .  Still  I  do  not  deny 
that  if  I  thought  of  any  desirable  piece  of 
good-luck,  it  appeared  most  attractive  in  the 
form  of  the  crown  of  laurel  which  is  woven  to 
decorate  the  poet."  (Autob.  end  of  Book 
Fourth.) 

In  the  early  days  of  October,  1765,  young 
Wolfgang  Goethe  arrived  at  Leipzig  to  attend 
the  University  in  general  and  specially  to  pre- 
pare for  the  vocation  which  his  father  had 
chosen  for  him  against  his  will,  that  of  juris- 
prudence. As  cities,  Leipzig  and  Frankfort 
were  nearly  of  the  same  size,  both  hovering1 
about  30,000  inhabitants ;  one  of  them  seems 
to  have  had  3,000  souls  more  than  the  other, 
but  which  one  of  two  it  was,  our  best  German 
authorities  disagree.  Let  them  fight  it  out; 
to  a  land  of  big  cities,  it  seems  but  another 
controversy  over  tweedle-dum  and  tweedle- 
dee.  The  young  fellow  arrived  at  the  time  of 
the  famous  Leipzig  Fair  in  which  he  took  a 


58  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

special  delight.  "I  wandered  through  the 
market  and  the  booths;  my  attention  was 
drawn  principally  to  the  strange  costumes  of 
the  people  of  Eastern  countries,  Poles,  Rus- 
sians, and  above  all  others  the  Greeks,  who 
charmed  by  their  distinguished  forms  and 
their  dignified  dress. "  Doubtless  too  he  now 
experiences  by  actual  sensation  that  the  old 
classic  people  yet  exists  with  its  language, 
fundamentally  still  alive,  and  with  somewhat 
of  its  ancient  Spirit. 

Our  fresh  student  naturally  began  the 
course  of  studies  prescribed  for  him  in  the 
parental  household.  But  we  have  already 
found  in  his  home  the  strongest  inner  revul- 
sion and  rebellion  against  his  father's  plan 
of  making  him  a  jurist.  It  did  not  take  him 
long,  however,  to  find  out  that  he  was  now  his 
own  man,  and  that  he  could  largely  mold  his 
own  future.  Not  only  with  home  and  father, 
but  with  his  native  city  he  had  fallen  out — a 
very  recalcitrant  youth.  Hear  him :  "I  rode 
away  from  Frankfort  with  pleasure,  and  Tin- 
regretfully  left  behind  me  the  worthy  city 
where  I  was  born  and  reared,  as  if  I  were  go- 
ing never  again  to  set  foot  inside  of  it. ' '  So 
he  regards  this  step  as  a  sort  of  new  birth, 
or  as  a  new  severance  of  tender  but  enslav 
ing  ties  which  nature  outgrows,  and  breaks. 
He  muses  on  review:  "Thus  at  certain 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  LEIPZIG.  59 

epochs  children  release  themselves  from  par- 
ents, servants  from  masters,  favorites  from 
their  patrons :  it  is  an  attempt  to  put  one 's 
self  upon  his  own  feet,  to  attain  personal  in- 
dependence, to  live  his  own  life.  Be  it  suc- 
cessful or  not,  it  is  according  to  the  will  of 
Nature. "  Or  as  we  may  say,  it  is  man's  en- 
deavor to  win  a  higher  freedom,  especially 
according  to  the  prescription  of  Rousseau. 

"Well,  how  did  our  released  youth  employ 
his  freedom?  There  is  no  doubt  that  he  in- 
dulged a  good  deal  in  an  irregular  life;  the 
penned-up  adolescent,  full  of  the  first  fury 
and  keenness  of  early  appetite,  broke  loose 
into  the  garden  of  sweet  but  forbidden  fruit ; 
we  read  of  high  living  and  deep  drinking,  of 
association  with  girls,  "who  were  better  than 
their  name, ' '  and  with  others  who  could  make 
no  .such  claim,  "through  whom  our  name 
would  not  be  bettered."  To  be  sure,  he  usu- 
ally wheeled  about  at  the  sharp  corner,  for 
that  life-long  peculiar  compromise  of  his  be- 
tween self-indulgence  and  self-restraint  he 
began  to  show  in  youth  as  his  saving  anchor. 

Significant  is  the  fact  that  in  his  revolu- 
tionary spirit  he  turned  against  the  regular 
work  of  the  University.  He  has  left  on  rec- 
ord his  verdant  contempt  for  the  whole  Pro- 
fessorate, and  his  revolt  against  their  in- 
struction. This  record,  we  are  not  to  forget, 


60  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

was  penned  by  Goethe  when  he  himself  was 
practically  at  the  head  of  a  University,  that 
of  Jena,  to  whose  instructors  he  may  well 
have  been  giving  an  indirect  lesson,  after  his 
subtle  pedagogy.  Especially  to  that  accursed 
Jurisprudence  he  played  truant,  possibly  out 
of  memory  for  his  jurist  father.  To  be  sure 
he  claims  that  owing  to  paternal  instruction 
at  home  "I  already  knew  just  as  much  as  our 
teachers  gave  us."  The  infernal  stuff  he 
could  not  hear  twice.  He  took  courses  in 
Logic  and  Metaphysics,  which  he  scoffed  at 
and  skimped,  applying  to  them  probably  al- 
ready the  Mephistophelean  mockery  in  Faust. 
But  the  Professors  of  those  subjects  in  which 
he  felt  an  interest  and  to  which  he  was  to  de- 
vote his  life,  hardly  fared  better  in  his  mood 
of  gall.  His  inclination  was  to  be  poet,  yet  the 
poet  Gellert  's  lectures  on  poetry  he  found  ut- 
terly flat  and  flaccid,  wholly  devoted  to  the 
old  poetic  grind  and  never  once  mentioning 
the  new  celestial  luminaries,  Klopstock  and 
Lessing.  To  Gottsched,  formerly  the  literary 
pope  of  Germany,  but  now  quite  dethroned, 
he  pays  a  visit  but  makes  the  tall,  big,  bald- 
pated  old  man,  who  slaps  the  ears  of  a  ser- 
vant in  presence  of  visitors,  the  center  of  a, 
scene  in  an  actual  comedy,  and  otherwise 
laughs  him  off  the  stage.  So  the  University, 
with  its  formal  pedagogy,  becomes  quite  as 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  LEIPZIG.  61 

distasteful  to  him  as  his  pedagogical  father, 
indeed  quite  similar,  and  receives  similar 
treatment. 

His  revolt  from  the  customs  of  tne  time 
and  the  place  seems  to  have  extended  to  his 
clothes.  He  dressed  in  an  outlandish  fashion 
of  his  own,  so  that  the  girls  made  fun  of  him, 
saying  that  "he  looked  as  if  he  had  snowed 
down  from  another  world."  The  letter  of  a 
fellow-student  has  preserved  this  account  of 
his  make-up:  "All  his  habits  and  his  pres- 
ent behavior  are  absolutely  different  from 
his  former  conduct.  In  his  pride  he  has  be- 
come a  dandy,  and  his  garments,  as  fine  as 
they  are,  show  such  senseless  taste,  that  they 
mark  him  out  in  the  whole  academy. ' '  Deeper 
still  cuts  the  Leipzig  criticism  on  his  lan- 
guage with  its  biblical  coloring,  its  aphoristic 
snappiness,  and  especially  its  overflow  of  the 
Frankfort  dialectal  peculiarities  in  contrast 
with  the  pure  classic  German  spoken  by  the 
highly  cultured  Leipzigers.  So  penetrating 
were  these  critical  thrusts  that  Goethe  long 
afterward  complained:  "I  felt  myself  par- 
alyzed in  my  innermost  self  and  hardly  knew 
any  longer  how  I  had  to  express  myself  about 
the  commonest  things. " 

Still  it  must  not  be  thought  that  the  young 
aspirer  was  idle ;  on  the  contrary  he  was  very 
busy  in  hewing  out  his  own  way;  he  was  mak- 


62  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

ing  Ms  own  curriculum  of  studies  and  pursu- 
ing it  with  a  vengeance.  In  his  father's  li- 
brary he  had  learned  to  devour  print  with 
leonine  voracity;  the  appetite  stayed  with 
him,  and  the  "  forty  book-shops  of  Leipzig " 
furnished  abounding  material  of  every  sort, 
as  this  city  was  then  the  center  of  the  Ger- 
man book-trade.  The  first  appearances  of 
the  new  German  Literature  were  just  seeing 
the  light  in  his  time;  he  hailed  Lessing's 
Laocoon  when  it  came  out,  illumining  the  lit- 
erary world,  "like  a  sudden  stroke  of  light- 
ning." He  read  Winckelmann's  great  work 
on  the  History  of  Art,  and  he  tells  how  the 
author  was  expected  at  Leipzig  when  the 
news  of  his  horrible  murder  fell  into  the 
midst  of  his  friends  there  "like  a  thunder- 
bolt from  a  clear  sky."  Wieland  also  laid 
strong  hold  of  him,  "the  best  of  all  those  old 
poets. ' '  Probably  his  first  real  acquaintance 
with  Shakespeare,  or  with  one  side  of  the 
many-sided  British  thunderer  took  place  at 
Leipzig  through  a  book  of  extracts  known  as 
"Dodd's  Beauties  of  Shakespeare,"  a  collec- 
tion of  the  mightily  worded  passages  which 
appeal  so  strongly  to  responsive  boys  of 
Goethe 's  age.  Later  he  will  be  inducted  more 
deeply  into  the  soul  of  the  English  drama- 
tist by  Herder. 

The  theater  became  at  Leipzig  not  merely 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  LEIPZIG.  63 

a  passionate  amusement  of  Goethe,  But  also  a 
part  of  his  deepest  and  most  permanent  edu- 
cation, a  genuine  study  in  his  self -chosen  cur- 
riculum. He  saw  good  acting,  especially  two 
attractive  actresses,  one  of  whom  afterward 
went  to  Weimar,  Corona  Schroeter.  He  even 
practiced  the  art,  taking  roles  in  amateur  the- 
atricals ;  thus  he  was  being  trained  for  an  im- 
portant strand  of  his  life-work  which  lay  in 
the  coming  development  of  the  German  the- 
atre. Still  further,  he  was  preparing  for  his 
chief  task  in  literature,  for  Goethe 's  literary 
expression  is  mainly  dramatic,  in  form  at 
least,  even  if  his  lyric  genius  is  the  more  im- 
mediate and  unforced,  and  the  more  endur- 
ing. His  two  earliest  remaining  dramas  are 
survivals  of  Leipzig,  samples  of  his  Univer- 
sity studies  outside  of  the  University,  theses 
for  which  he  received  no  degree,  but  which 
welled  up  from  the  native  fountains  of  his 
spirit. 

Another  thread  woven  through  his  Leipzig 
life-course  was  that  of  art.  He  became  ac- 
quainted with  a  painter  by  the  name  of  Oeser, 
who  possessed  also  the  additional  attraction 
of  an  agreeable  daughter,  very  friendly  to 
the  young  patrician  of  Frankfort,  and  easily 
stirring  a  responsive  pit-a-pat  in  the  heart 
of  Phileros.  The  latter  corresponds  with  the 
daughter  at  a  later  time  and  he  praises  her 


64  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

father  who  "  taught  me  that  the  ideal  of 
beauty  is  noble  simplicity  and  repose. "  The 
same  thought  is  found  in  Winckelmann,  who 
also  drew  it  from  Oeser,  once  his  teacher. 
Oeser  indeed  was  rather  a  great  personal  in- 
fluence than  an  original  artist.  He  was  an 
enemy  of  the  rococo  style  with  its  convulsions 
and  grotesquery,  and  he  had  a  chief  hand  in 
driving  it  out  of  his  part  of  Germany.  He 
may  be  set  down  as  noteworthy  in  Goethe 's 
evolution,  since  he  gave  to  the  latter  a  turn 
toward  the  classic  ideal,  which  will  culminate 
in  the  poet's  Italian  Journey,  and  inspire  a 
long  line  of  poetic  works  during  his  classic 
period.  So  deep-seated  became  Oeser 's  in- 
fluence that  he  laid  in  Goethe's  soul  a  doubt 
in  regard  to  his  vocation :  shall  I  be  an  artist 
or  poet?  That  wrenching  dubitation  har- 
assed the  poet  for  more  than  forty  years ;  he 
wanted  to  be  what  he  could  not — a  formative 
artist  in  color  and  marble,  instead  of  or  per- 
chance along  with  the  word — and  so  he  spent 
much  valuable  time  in  running  counter  to  his 
own  true  genius.  In  this  connection  should 
be  added  the  name  of  the  engraver  Stock,  un- 
der whom  Goethe  practised  etching  and  en- 
graving, besides  having  a  jolly  good  time 
with  him  in  the  wine-shop,  after  the  convivial 
fashion  of  artists.  Thus  we  observe  our  stu- 
dent taking  quite  an  universal  art-course  out- 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  LEIPZIG.  65 

.<• 

side  the  University.  The  intended  lawyer 
seems  to  intend  everything  else  but  the  law, 
disliking  it,  indeed  defying  it  by  his  action, 
and  flinging  it  overboard  in  his  new  freedom. 

Goethe  himself  was  well  aware  of  his  neg- 
ative condition  and  thus  comments  on  it  in 
his  Autobiography:  "And  so  the  time  kept 
approaching  when  all  authority  was  to  van- 
ish, and  I  was  to  feel  doubt  or  rather  despair 
even  as  regards  the  greatest  and  best  indi- 
viduals I  had  ever  known  or  conceived. " 
He  is  verily  becoming  his  own  young  Mephis- 
topheles,  scoffing  at  all  human  greatness  and 
worth,  and  denying  all  but  his  own  denial. 
One  of  his  ideals  which  he  brought  from 
Frankfort  was  Frederick  the  Great.  But  to 
this  supreme  German  hero  of  the  century, 
German  Leipzig  was  hostile,  belittling  him 
in  every  way  and  criticising  his  mistakes, 
military  and  political,  and  thus  overthrowing 
his  triumphs. 

The  city  had  indeed  felt  his  heavy  hand  in 
war,  could  not  love  him  and  would  not  appre- 
ciate him.  We  have  already  seen  that  Fred- 
erick caused  a  split  in  the  poet's  own  family 
at  Frankfort;  still  the  father  remained  a 
stanch  admirer  of  the  Prussian  king,  and 
this  admiration  the  son  brought  with  him  to 
Leipzig,  whose  vitriolic  atmosphere  gradu- 
ally destroyed  it.  No  hero  any  more — noth- 


66  GOETHE' 8  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

ing  heroic — poor  youth,  unpoetic  poet,  hap- 
less adolescent  coddling  his  petty  world- 
pain! 

Of  course  our  young  denier,  having  so 
much  of  the  Mephistopheles  in  him,  soon 
found  the  latter  embodied  outside  of  him. 
This  new  companion  was  called  Behrisch, 
and  was  engaged  as  tutor  to  a  young  noble- 
man. He  was  an  oddity  in  dress  and  man- 
ner, but  his  special  gift  was  in  killing  time 
and  all  that  time  contains.  He  took  chief 
pleasure  in  treating  earnestly  the  follies  of 
life,  and  in  running  down  some  silly  notion 
into  endless  detail  of  mockery.  Culture  and 
knowledge  he  possessed,  was  well  versed  in 
modern  languages  and  their  literatures;  but 
the  result  of  all  his  studies  was  to  make  him 
the  better  scoffer.  Of  course  such  a  charac- 
ter was  not  troubled  with  moral  scruples,  and 
it  seems  that  the  tutor  led  both  his  friend  and 
his  ward  into  the  Witches'  Kitchen  of  Leip- 
zig. The  result  was  scandal  and  trouble  of 
which  Goethe  lets  us  take  quite  a  glimpse  in 
his  book.  But  Mephistopheles  lost  his  job  of 
tutoring  and  had  to  leave  town,  whereat  some 
versified  lamentations  of  young  Wolfgang 
bubbled  forth  and  have  been  preserved.  Such 
was  one  of  the  Leipzig  educators  of  the  com- 
ing poet  of  Faust,  who  let  him  see  what  life 
was  outside  of  books. 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  LEIPZIG.  67 

£• 

It  is  no  wonder,  then,  that  Goethe  obtained 
the  reputation  among  the  staid  University 
authorities  of  being  "a  dangerous  student. " 
For  the  Professor,  dull  and  dignified,  he  had 
no  respect;  at  the  lectures  he  would  draw 
caricatures  instead  of  taking  notes,  and  pass 
them  around  to  raise  a  laugh  and  to  distract 
the  attention  of  the  class.  Of  his  father,  even, 
he  made  game  in  his  letters,  writing  him 
thus :  ' '  You  cannot  believe  what  a  fine  thing 
it  is  to  be  a  Professor.  I  was  altogether  en- 
raptured when  I  saw  some  of  these  people  in 
all  their  glory.  Nothing  more  magnificent, 
weighty  and  honorable. ' '  Then  he  adds  in  a 
Latin  sentence  for  his  pedagogical  papa:  "I 
thirst  for  no  other  honors  except  those  of  a 
Professorship."  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the 
old  man  never  saw  through  the  irony. 

And  now  we  come  to  the  deepest,  most  in- 
tense, most  real  part  of  Goethe's  Leipzig 
curriculum — it  was  his  love  for  Anna  Kath- 
arina  Schonkopf  (his  dear  Katy),  whose  fa- 
ther kept  a  wine-shop  and  boarding-house 
where  Goethe  ate  and  drank.  She  could  not 
be  called  beautiful,  though  of  an  open,  tender, 
attractive  look;  not  very  large,  but  active; 
not  highly  educated  but  endowed  with  prosy 
good-sense.  Moreover,  she  was  three  years 
older  than  her  admirer,  without  his  vast 
overflow  of  fancy  and  emotion,  a  well-bal- 


68  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

anced  head,  rather  unromantic  and  deeply 
addicted  to  the  humdrum  of  life. 

So  our  Phileros  is  to  play  his  drama  again 
now  at  Leipzig,  with  many  a  new  turn  and 
with  prolonged  throes  of  intensity.  But 
three  prominent  obstacles  rise  up  in  the  way 
of  their  union:  the  difference  between  the 
lovers  in  rank,  wealth  and  age.  What  will 
our  young  poet  do  as  he  dashes  up  against 
these  barriers?  Leap  over  them,  of  course, 
as  they  are  more  or  less  conventional  any- 
how ;  besides  we  have  already  seen  his  bound- 
breaking  mood,  his  defiance  of  the  established 
precedent.  One  of  his  letters  of  this  time  has 
been  preserved  (to  his  friend  Moors,  October 
1,1766),  in  which  he  exclaims:  " What  is 
station  ?  A  vain  color  which  men  have  found 
for  the  purpose  of  daubing  it  on  people  who 
do  not  deserve  it.  And  money  is  likewise  a 
miserable  claim  of  superiority  in  the  eyes  of 
a  man  who  thinks.  I  love  a  maiden  without 
position  and  without  property,  and  now  I 
feel  for  the  first  time  the  happiness  which  a 
true  love  produces/'  So  he  proclaims  his 
fealty  to  Love,  the  all-leveler  at  least  in  the 
wine-shop. 

Another  point  to  be  considered  is  the 
length  of  time  which  the  passion  lasted  with 
all  its  torturing  tortuosities;  he  takes  his 
meals  at  the  Schonkopf  hostelry,  sees  the 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  LEIPZIG.  69 

.4- 

girl  daily  at  her  work  and  play  for  two  years 
and  a  half,  during  which  he  says  he  was  part 
and  parcel  of  the  household.  Yet  the  obsta- 
cles were  ever  present  to  his  mind  and  hers , 
both  doubtless  believed  that  she  could  never 
become  his  wife. 

But  all  the  more  madly  dashed  the  foam- 
capped  tempest  of  love  against  its  limits.  As 
Katharina  was  of  marriageable  age  and  time 
was  passing,  she  naturally  entertained  some 
other  suitors.  All  this  became  the  source  of 
the  stormiest  Olympian  jealousy  in  young 
Phileros,  he  raved  and  foamed  and  set  it  all 
down  in  writing.  Quite  recently  his  letters 
penned  during  these  paroxysms  have  been 
discovered  and  published.  Let  us  try  some 
extracts:  "Ha,  friend,  now  comes  one  of  my 
moments ! — 0  God,  God — let  me  first  get  back 
to  myself — accursed  be  love — 0  if  you  could 
see  me,  the  wretched  one,  how  I  rave  and  do 
not  know  against  whom  I  should  rave,  you 
would  pity  me. — Now  it  is  8  o'clock,  my  blood 
runs  calmer,  I  shall  talk  to  you  more  quietty 
— but  not  more  rationally. ' '  So  he  recounts 
in  a  series  of  letters  his  jealous  perturba- 
tions, racked  to  agony  by  love  yet  bound  fast 
to  the  Promethean  rock.  "I  have  tried  the 
whole  evening  in  vain  to  shed  tears,  but  my 
teeth  gnash  together,  and  in  that  state  I  can- 
not weep. — -What  if  she  continues  to  act 


70  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

coldly  toward  me!  I  shall  punish  her,  the 
most  fearful  jealousy  shall  torture  her — no, 
no,  that  I  cannot  do."  For  his  Katy  in  the 
wineshop  can  certainly  trump  his  card. 

Such,  then,  was  the  emotional  life  of  the 
young  poet  during  nearly  three  years  of  his 
Leipzig  period,  producing  yet  another  and 
the  most  radical  interference  with  study. 
Here  were  obstacles  in  the  path  of  the  world- 
storming  youth,  human  conventions  which  he 
could  not  surmount  in  contempt  even  if  man 
made  them.  Be  it  said  to  the  honor  of  the 
woman  that  she  was  disposed  to  maintain 
them  against  her  fiery  lover;  heart-crushing 
was  the  torment  he  caused  her  through  his 
fits  of  jealousy,  which  sometimes  rose  to 
downright  threats  of  vengeance,  as  we  may 
see  in  some  of  his  letters.  An  actual  Othello 
he  was  in  his  demoniac  rages ;  it  is  recorded 
that  the  pair  went  through  "awful  scenes" 
together.  She  was  a  waitress  on  her  father's 
customers  in  the  matter  of  food  and  drink, 
and  had  to  be  friendly  to  all ;  but  young  Wolf- 
gang seems  to  have  been  jealous  of  a  smile 
given  to  anybody  else  along  with  a  bumper  of 
beer  or  dish  of  noodles.  The  result  was  a 
gradual  estrangement  on  part  of  the  woman. 
A  letter  tells  of  the  breach :  She  and  I  * '  have 
separated,  and  now  we  are  happy.  We  are 
now  only  friends — no  more  intimacy.  We 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  LEIPZIG.  71 

.$• 

began  with  love  and  conclude  with  friendship. 
0  she  is  an  angel ! ' '  Ominous  words  these  for 
mere  friendship.  The  fact  is  that  Katharina 
Schonkopf  has  decisively  dismissed  Wolf- 
gang Goethe  while  his  passion  is  still  as  flam- 
ing as  ever.  She,  the  level-headed,  practical, 
unimaginative  bar-maid,  for  this  she  is,  has 
had  ample  cause  to  discover  that  such  a 
genius  is  an  ever-burning  Inferno,  and  she 
does  not  propose  to  enter  Hell-fire  for  life. 
Moreover  another  suitor  has  put-in  appear- 
ance at  the  Schonkopf  dining  table  and  pot- 
house, introduced  by  Goethe,  too,  as  if  fate 
would  make  him  the  instrument  of  his  own 
undoing.  This  new  boarder  was  a  Doctor 
Kanne,  two  years  older  than  the  woman  and 
already  established  as  a  lawyer;  a  steady, 
prosaic  man,  far  more  desirable  as  a  match, 
and  more  like  herself,  Katharina  must  think. 
An  attachment  springs  up  and  grows  to  the 
howling  jealousy  of  Wolfgang,  who  actually 
gets  sick,  or  makes  himself  sick,  and  has  to 
go  home  for  recovery. 

Meanwhile  this  stay  of  the  poet  at  Leipzig 
has  left  its  mark  not  only  on  his  life  but  also 
on  literature  for  all  time.  It  has  come  down 
to  us  in  no  less  than  four  literary  forms,  each 
of  which  is  employed  by  the  poetical  sufferer 
as  a  means  of  self-expression.  They  all  re- 
veal the  same  uncontrolled  upheaval  and  pite- 


72  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

ous  self-lacerations  of  love-lashed  Phileros, 
but  from  different  points  of  view. 

First  is  his  most  direct  and  stormy  utter- 
ance, contained  in  the  letters  specially  ad- 
dressed to  his  friend  Behrisch  which  have 
quite  recently  come  to  light.  Disjointed,  el- 
liptical, apostrophic,  they  are  a  frenzy  of 
speech,  a  delirium  of  molten  lava-like  pas- 
sion splashing  over  the  reader,  who  often 
dodges.  They  are  the  prelude  of  Werther, 
only  hotter;  they  also  show  the  epistolary 
form  as  the  first  elemental  expression  of  his 
genius — a  form  which  he  will  use  to  the  end 
of  his  days. 

Second  is  his  lyrical  output,  of  which  two 
different  volumes  have  come  down  to  us.  The 
Leipzig  Book  of  Songs  was  actually  published 
in  1769  with  music  by  Goethe's  friend,  Breit- 
kopf,  of  Leipzig.  A  second  collection  has 
been  recently  brought  to  light,  with  its  ded- 
ication to  Annette  (Goethe's  name  for  Kath- 
arina),  most  of  them  little  effusions  of  pas- 
sion for  his  adorable  goddess,  in  Anacreontic 
tira-lira  of  love.  They  have  their  worth  as 
showing  a  psychologic  stage  in  the  early  de- 
velopment of  the  poet,  but  they  are  not  equal 
to  Goethe's  later  lyrics  at  his  best. 

Third  is  his  little  pastoral  drama,  The 
Whimsical  Lover,  in  which  he  sets  forth  his 
own  amatory  caprices  toward  Katharina, 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  LEIPZIG.  73 

.so- 
under the  names  of  Eridon  and  Amina.  With 
this  pair  of  lovers  is  contrasted  a  second  pair, 
Lamon  and  Egle,  whose  course  of  love  runs 
smooth  in  its  happy  channel.  "It  is  care- 
fully copied  from  nature, ' '  said  Goethe  at  the 
time  (1767)  in  a  letter  to  his  sister,  but  it  is 
quite  devoid  of  the  fiery  intensity  of  his  con- 
temporaneous epistles  already  cited.  Still 
he  claims  to  have  written  it  as  a  kind  of 
atonement  for  his  whimsical  behavior  toward 
his  sweetheart.  It  was  incorporated  by  Goe- 
the himself  in  his  works  as  his  earliest 
drama,  and  as  the  beginning  of  that  series  of 
confessions,  which  run  through  all  his  chief 
writings,  his  heart's  deepest  confidences  pub- 
lished by  him  to  the  public. 

Fourth  is  the  account  of  his  Leipzig  years, 
composed  long  afterward  and  given  in  his 
Autobiography.  This  is  emphatically  the 
cool  reminiscence  of  the  ageing  author,  and 
is  well  worthy  of  being  compared  with  the 
other  three  utterances  which  belong  to  up- 
roarous  youth  and  are  contemporaneous  with 
the  matters  experienced.  The  most  striking 
fact  is  the  meagerness  of  his  narrative  about 
the  very  real  Katharina  in  contrast  with  his 
elaborate  fullness  concerning  the  half-myth- 
ical Gretchen,  his  antecedent  heroine,  whom 
he  saw  only  a  few  scattered  times  and  for  a 
little  period.  And  his  next  story  of  love,  that 


74  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

of  Frederika  is  wrought  out  in  still  greater 
detail  and  interest;  yet  he  could  never  have 
had  half  as  much  to  do  with  Frederika  as 
with  Katharina,  nor  could  his  passion  for 
the  latter  have  been  less  intense  than  it  was 
for  the  former,  in  view  of  -the  exact  evidence. 
Let  us  declare  at  once  our  opinion :  Katha- 
rina Schonkopf  jilted  our  young  Phileros  and 
left  him  on  his  back  totally  upset  and  pros- 
trate. This  happened  in  neither  of  the  other 
cases ;  the  memory  of  his  defeat  was  not  a 
pleasant  topic,  even  to  old  Phileros,  and  so  he 
forgot  to  explain  the  joyless,  unheroic  novel- 
ette. He  has  himself  put  the  three  together, 
showing  that  they  were  present  to  his  mind 
in  a  kind  of  gradation :  ' '  Gretchen  was  taken 
away  from  me,  Katharina  abandoned  me,  so 
that  in  both  instances  I  incurred  no  blame, 
which,  however,  fell  upon  me  in  the  case  of 
Frederika. "  Note  here  the  order  of  these 
darlings,  about  which  Goethe  himself  is  not 
always  consistent,  sometimes  placing  Annett? 
(his  Katy)  as  the  first  one,  wherein  many 
German  writers  have  followed  him.  But 
Gretchen  is  to  be  put  first,  as  he  does  in  the 
paragraph  dealing  with  his  second  love :  i  i  My 
former  inclination  to  Gretchen  I  had  now 
transferred  to  Annette/'  so  he  marks  em- 
phatically the  transition.  He  goes  on:  "Of 
the  latter  I  have  only  to  say  that  she  was 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  LEIPZIG.  75 

.*• 

young,  pretty,  lively  and  lovely,  and  so  agree- 
able that  she  deserved  to  be  set  up  for  a  while 
in  the  shrine  of  the  heart  as  a  little  Saint  in 
order  to  pay  her  the  adoration  which  often 
aroused  more  pleasure  in  giving  than  in  re- 
ceiving. ' '  How  does  this  sound  ?  Gallant  ex- 
ternally is  the  tone,  but  internally  without 
heart — a  subject  which  he  seems  inclined  to 
dismiss,  adding  a  few  complimentary  com- 
mon-places, with  a  slightly  satirical  tang. 

Then  how  does  it  comport  with  those  awful 
spasms  of  jealousy  which  burst  forth  when 
she  did  not  give  back  to  him  and  to  him  alone 
her  adoration.  (See  his  letters  to  Behrisch.) 
Such  is  the  senescent  Goethe  reporting  tho 
adolescent  Goethe,  with  the  repertorial  wry 
face  made  at  a  sour  memory  in  spite  of  gray 
hairs. 

Still  he  braces  himself  up  to  tell  the  main 
facts  in  a  few  short  sentences:  "I  saw  her 
daily  without  hindrances.  She  helped  pre- 
prepare  the  food  which  I  consumed,  she 
brought  me,  at  least  in  the  evening,  the  wine 
which  I  drank.  There  was  many  an  oppor- 
tunity and  wish  for  entertainment.  .  .  .  Fin  • 
ally  I  was  seized  by  that  ugly  distemper 
which  seduces  us  to  get  amusement  out  of 
the  torment  of  the  loved  one,  and  to  domi- 
nate the  devotion  of  a  girl  with  tryannical 
caprices. "  Of  this  behavior  he  gives  as 


76  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

cause  "the  bad  mood,  produced  by  the  fail- 
ure of  my  poetical  attempts,"  but  his  contem- 
porary letters  show  a  different,  more  com- 
pelling reason.  Still  the  truth  will  leak 
out:  "Through  unbounded  and  senseless 
fits  of  jealousy,  I  spoilt  for  me  and  her  the 
fairest  days,  though  she  dearly  loved  me  and 
did  what  she  could  for  my  pleasure.  She  en- 
dured my  torment  for  a  while  with  incred- 
ible patience  which  I  was  cruel  enough  to 
drive  to  the  extreme."  Now  for  the  real 
pivot:  "At  last  I  had  to  observe,  to  my  shame 
and  despair,  that  her  heart  had  turned  away 
from  me.  .  .  .  But  my  passion  only  in- 
creased and  took  all  forms;  for  I  could  not 
renounce  the  hope  of  winning  her  back. 
There  were  frightful  scenes  between  us  which 
did  no  good.  ...  I  had  really  lost  her." 
Moreover  the  other  man  had  appeared,  Herr 
Kanne,  Doctor  of  Law,  who  afterwards  be- 
came her  husband,  though  Goethe  will  not 
mention  his  rival  in  this  connection.  The  fact 
is  he  was  distanced  by  the  new  suitor,  being 
very  decisively  sent  adrift  by  the  girl — bravo 
for  her !  Still  one  drawback  we  shall  have  to 
note  with  regret:  We  shall  now  have  no 
pretty  novelette  of  love  interwoven  with  the 
story  of  the  author's  life  in  the  case  of  An- 
nette, as  we  had  of  Gretclien,  and  shall  have 
of  Frederika  and  others;  old-aged  Goethe  is 


AT  THE  UNIVHIfK/TY  OF  LEIPZIG.  11 

.$• 

not  going  to  celebrate  his  long  and  fervent 
suit  criss-crossed  by  a  bar-maid.  That  were 
just  a  littlo  too  unheroic  for  Phileros,  love's 
triumphant  hero.  So  he  refuses  to  idealize 
his  coriqueress,  the  humble  Annette,  though 
she  be  a  true  heroine  in  saving  herself  and 
serving  up  to  her  haughty  tormentor  a  bitter 
dose  of  his  own  deed. 

Now  what  happens?  "In  my  frenzy  I 
avenged  my  folly  on  myself.  I  stormed 
?rj-ainst  my  physical  nature  in  manifold 
senseless  ways,  in  order  to  do  injury  to  the 
moral ;  this  contributed  very  much  to  the  bod- 
ily ills,  under  which  I  lost  some  of  the  best 
years  of  my  life."  The  meaning  of  these 
veiled  allusions  are  plain  enough:  he  gave 
himself  up  to  prolonged  dissipation  and  sen- 
sual indulgence  to  drown  his  agony  at  the 
loss  of  Annette  the  passion  for  whom  was  of 
the  most  desperate  and  deepest-searching  of 
his  life,  at  the  same  time  the  most  crushing 
in  its  humiliation.  He  adds  now  a  glimpse  of 
his  great  remedial  gift :  "I  would  have  prob • 
ably  gone  to  complete  destruction  through 
this  loss,  had  not  my  poetic  talent  with  its 
healing  powers  come  to  my  help."  Still  he 
fell  sick  and  took  to  his  bed,  till  he  was  nursed 
up  sufficiently  to  go  home  to  Frankfort  for 
recovery.  So  Phileros  has  received  the  coun- 
ter-stroke of  love,  its  furious  vengeance  for 


78  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

its  wrong,  for  its  wanton  violation,  and  long 
will  he  remember  it,  and  he  will  also  record 
it,  but  not  under  his  own  name ;  the  recollec- 
tion of  it  will  not  flow  triumphantly  through 
his  goose-quill. 

Thus  our  poet  has  passed  through  the  dis- 
cipline of  love's  transgressor  and  paid  the 
penalty  adjudged  to  his  deed  by  the  Upper 
Powers.  Yet  he  punished  himself  at  the  same 
time ;  his  vengeful  act  inflicted  upon  an  inno- 
cent heart  was  his  own  boomerang  returning 
to  the  source  whence  it  came.  The  rattle- 
snake bit  itself  in  its  frenzy  and  writhed  mor- 
tally in  its  own  poison.  So  he  confesses  to 
his  deed,  and  on  the  whole  quite  adequately, 
which  confession  is  not  in  vain,  for  it  is  in  its 
nature  remedial  and  soul-liberating. 

In  this  connection  Goethe  sets  down  one  of 
his  weightiest  utterances  regarding  his  lit- 
erary procedure:  "And  this  started  that 
tendency  from  which  I  have  never  been  able 
to  swerve  during  my  whole  life,  namely  to 
transmute  that  which  rejoiced  or  tormented 
me,  or  otherwise  occupied  me,  into  a  pic- 
ture, a  poem.  In  that  way  I  got  rid 
of  it,  correcting  my  impressions  of  ex- 
ternal things  as  well  as  calming  my  internal 
upheavals.  The  gift  could  be  to  nobody  more 
necessary  than  to  me,  whom  nature  drove  al- 
ways from  one  extreme  to  the  other.  Every- 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  LEIPZIG.  79 

thing,  therefore,  which  has  been  published  by 
me  constitutes  only  the  fragments  of  one 
great  confession  which  this  little  book  (his 
Autobiography)  daringly  attempts  to  render 
complete/' 

Such  we  may  deem  the  prof oundest  course 
of  training  which  the  poet  took  at  Leipzig- 
University,  even  if  not  set  down  in  its  regu- 
lar calendar.  We  can  see  that  he  has  gone 
through  the  purgatorial  process  of  penitence 
for  the  sinful  deed:  contrition,  confession, 
atonement.  To  be  sure  his  way  is  not  that  of 
the  church,  though  it  be  essentially  the  same ; 
its  form  is  not  religious  but  literary.  He  too 
must  travel  the  journey  of  repentance  and 
make  undone  his  wrongful  conduct  through 
expiation;  but  he  cannot  call  in  priestly  ab- 
solution, it  must  be  won  by  himself  in  his 
own  characters  through  self-expression  by 
means  of  literature.  Thus  the  pen  becomes 
to  him  not  merely  an  instrument  of  pleasure 
or  profit,  but  of  his  soul's  salvation.  Sue!?, 
we  may  regard  the  deepest  fact  of  his  mes- 
sage which  he  will  continue  to  herald  to  the 
end  of  his  days.  And  this  too  is  the  pivotal 
point  which  makes  his  name  and  work  the 
greatest  in  recent  Letters.  He  represents  a 
new  and  deeper  expiation  of  errant  mortality. 

There  is  a  second  drama  printed  in  Goe- 
the's works  which  belongs  to  his  Leipzig  pe- 


80  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

riod,  called  the  Fellow  Culprits.  Four  char- 
acters take  part  in  the  play,  all  villains  at 
heart — two  thieves  and  two  adulterers — yet 
only  one  of  them  succeeds  in  getting  the  bad 
deed  done,  and  in  stealing  some  money.  But 
the  intrigue  is  so  carried  out  that  they  all 
discover  one  another,  and  forgive  themselves 
mutually.  Goethe  in  his  Autobiography  tries 
to  make  out  that  the  drama  illustrates  the 
words  of  Christ:  "Let  him  that  is  without 
sin  among  you  cast  the  first  stone."  Still 
the  poet  had  to  acknowledge  its  failure :  "The 
harshly  outspoken  illegal  actions  violate  the 
aesthetic  and  moral  feeling,  and  therefore 
found  no  entrance  on  the  German  stage." 
But  it  remained  a  favorite  of  his  to  the  last, 
and  he  caused  it  often  to  be  played  in  the 
Weimar  theater.  On  the  whole  the  only  ex- 
planation of  his  negative  work  is  that  it  rep- 
resents his  strong  reaction  against  law  and 
the  transmitted  order,  which  was  his  main 
mood  at  Leipzig,  though  he  says  he  felt  it  al- 
ready at  Frankfort.  "In  my  affair  with 
Gretchen  I  had  seen  how  society  is  under- 
mined. Religion,  morals,  law,  station,  rela- 
tions, custom,  all  of  them  influence  only  the 
surface  of  city-life."  So  he  turns  his  pes- 
simistic view  into  a  drama,  which  always 
kept  its  hold  on  him,  especially  in  his  Me- 
phistophelean humor,  which  on  provocation 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  LEIPZIG.  81 

.*• 

would  burst  forth  in  furious  overflow  from 
Ms  tongue  till  its  last  fire-tip  of  sulphurous 
execration. 

Still  we  are  to  note  that  his  mood  was  but 
a  transitory  phase,  the  negative  or  diabolic 
part  of  the  universal  man  who  indeed  repre- 
sents the  universe,  not  omitting  old  Satan. 

Such,  then,  was  the  basic  discipline  which 
young  Wolfgang  Goethe  received  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Leipzig.  His  chief  instructor  was 
indubitably  the  bar-maid,  Katharina  Schon- 
kopf,  who  gave  him  life's  profoundest,  least 
forgettable  lesson.  All  his  other  Professors 
and  their  erudite  lectures  were  very  superfi- 
cial driftwood  floating  on  the  river  of  his 
love.  Phileros  had  gotten  an  ultimate  ex- 
perience of  his  own  innermost  nature ;  he  had 
attained  a  stage  of  self-knowledge  far  more 
significant  than  any  other  sort  of  learning, 
and  had  transformed  Leipzig  University  into 
Life's  University.  But  the  shock  reached 
down  to  the  very  roots  of  existence,  and  his 
life  trembled  in  the  balance.  As  already  in- 
dicated, his  health  has  given  away,  and  so  he 
turns  down  the  road  homewards  for  Frank- 
fort, while  his  head  doubtless  keeps  running 
over  with  sober  reflections  upon  his  past  do- 
ings. 


82  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

V. 

Home  Again. 

It  is  recorded  that  on  or  about  September 
2,  1768,  Goethe,  the  undone  student  physic- 
ally and  mentally,  returns  to  the  family  cir- 
cle at  Frankfort,  consisting  of  father, 
mother,  sister;  he  was  still  an  invalid  and 
destined  to  have  many  fluctuations  of  illness 
for  the  coming  eighteen  months.  Exactly  the 
sort  of  Goethe's  bodily  malady  has  never 
been  determined.  He  was  plagued  with  a 
sore  on  his  neck  which  would  not  heal;  then 
it  was  supposed  he  had  a  pulmonary  trouble, 
with  an  outlook  upon  consumption  perchance ; 
but  soon  we  hear:  "Nothing  is  the  matter 
with  my  lungs,  it  is  my  stomach  which  is  out 
of  order. "  On  his  sister's  birthday,  some 
three  months  after  his  arrival,  he  was  at- 
tacked by  awful  pains;  the  good  mother 
opened  her  Bible  for  a  prophetic,  possibly 
prophylactic  verse,  and  behold  this  text  of 
Jeremiah  fell  first  into  her  eye :  ' '  Thou  shalt 
yet  plant  vines  upon  the  mountains  of  Sama- 
ria;" whereat  she  was  much  consoled  and 
took  new  hope.  Moreover,  a  kind  of  doctor- 
ing is  introduced  through  a  woman  friend  of 
the  family,  Fraulein  Von  Klettenburg,  who 


HOME  AGAIN.  83 

.*• 

combines  medicine  and  religion;  but  she  also 
introduces  a  regular  physician  who  unites  in 
the  practice  of  his  art  both  constituents  of 
the  sick  man,  the  physical  and  the  psychical, 
to  be  sure,  compounded  with  some  peculiar 
alchemistic  preparations.  But  we  must  rec- 
ollect that  chemistry  as  a  science  was  then 
just  beginning  to  throw  off  its  swaddling 
clothes,  and  to  step  forth  in  its  modern  glory. 
Wolfgang's  crisis  was  averted  by  adminis- 
tering a  mysterious  salt  of  the  doctor's  own 
composition,  given  />nly  by  him  at  the  last 
turning  point  between  life  and  death.  Other 
influences  were  invoked  by  the  mother  and 
her  female  friend,  influences  which  in  these 
days  would  be  called  psychic  or  spiritistic, 
about  the  bedside  of  the  seemingly  dying  pa- 
tient. But  betterment  after  two  days  set  in 
though  during  three  weeks  he  could  not  leave 
his  room,  or  even  sit  in  an  upright  posture 
for  half  an  hour. 

When  Wolfgang  was  well  enough,  ho 
turned  back  to  ponder  his  miraculous  cure, 
and  sought  to  find  out  its  method,  which  had 
so  strangely  vindicated  the  doctrines  of  Frau- 
lein  Von  Klettenburg  and  her  physician.  So 
he  began  the  study  of  books  on  alchemy,  and 
experimented  with  retorts,  furnaces  and  test- 
tubes,  transforming  his  attic  into  a  labora- 
tory. He  must  have  continued  for  some  time 


84  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

the  pursuit  of  this  alchemistic  ideal,  seeking 
the  unitary  substance  of  nature,  the  mother 
element  of  all  elements,  so  dimly  yet  attrac- 
tively floating  before  Paracelsus,  Van  Hel- 
mont,  Welling,  and  other  writers  of  the  kind. 
Now  the  interest  of  these  studies  is  that  they 
are  reflected  in  the  early  scenes  of  Faust, 
where  the  tireless  but  unsuccessful  searcher 
for  truth  drops  back  into  magic  and  tries  to 
grasp  the  grand  boon  in  that  way,  evoking 
an  exalted  vision  of  the  Nature-Spirit,  when 
it  suddenly  vanishes,  and  leaves  him  in  his 
old  skepticism.  That  doctor  with  his  mar- 
velous salt  was  a  sort  of  believing  Faust,  but 
Goethe,  after  trying  the  experiments  to  a 
sufficiency,  became  the  disbelieving  Faust — 
truth  was  not  to  be  won  in  that  way.  So  this 
experience  of  the  poet  has  written  itself 
down  on  a  page  of  the  World's  Liter- 
ature. 

The  prodigal  had  returned  home,  but  old 
ties  were  not  restored.  The  father,  stern, 
formal,  and  rather  narrow,  did  not  conceal 
his  disappointment  in  his  son  who  had  come 
back  without  a  degree,  sick,  petulant,  ship- 
wrecked seemingly  in  soul  and  body.  The 
two  had  many  a  disagreeable  tilt,  the  sick- 
ling  being  inclined  to  criticise  right  and 
left  the  appointments  of  the  house  with  the 
freedom  of  Leipzig,  the  old  man  resenting 


HOME  AGAIN.  85 

such  unfilial  impertinence.  The  mother 's  gift 
of  reconciliation  was  often  severely  tested. 
Wolfgang  pitied  deeply  his  sister  Cornelia, 
who  in  his  absence  had  to  take  the  concen- 
trated cannonade  of  pedagogy  from  the 
schoolmastering  parent.  It  had  nearly  killed 
her,  destroying  all  pleasure  of  life*;  then,  too, 
she  was  morbid  over  her  ugly  features, 
which  seemed  to  repel  all  suitors  from  one 
who  was  most  in  need  of  love.  That  house- 
hold was  accordingly  quite  out  of  tune  with 
itself,  the  two  children  only  waited  an  oppor- 
tunity to  fly  away  for  good  from  what  was  to 
them  a  domestic  Inferno. 

Meantime  Wolfgang  in  convalescent  peri- 
ods would  bury  himself  in  the  books  of  the 
well-stocked  library  of  his  father;  his  read- 
ing was  considerable,  but  miscellaneous.  Also 
he  would  break  out  into  rhymes  now  and 
then  in  his  stronger  moods ;  some  of  these 
verses  have  been  preserved.  He  studied  a 
little  philosophy,  chiefly  of  the  Neo-Platonic 
pantheistic  cast,  as  he  states  in  his  Autobiog- 
raphy; "the  mystical,  hermetical,  cabalistic 
writings  contributed  their  part."  Among 
other  things  he  made  his  own  religion  at  his 
leisure,  being  predisposed  to  such  contempla- 
tion by  illness,  and  also  incited  by  Fraulein 
Von  Klettenburg.  A  pantheistic  world-view 
was  indeed  native  to  him;  it  stayed  with  him 


86  GOETHE'S  LIFE -POEM. —PART  FIRST. 

through  life  and  later  found  utterance  in  his 
devotion  to  Spinoza.  He  had  a  tendency  to 
turn  back  upon  himself  to  review  his  past ;  he 
re-read  his  Leipzig  letters  which  had  been 
carefully  saved  by  the  folks  at  home.  The 
survey  did  not  always  give  him  satisfaction ; 
he  criticised  himself  and  carried  his  damna- 
tory judgment  to  the  pitch  of  burning  a  pile 
of  his  poems — his  second  expiation  by  fire  of 
his  literary  sins. 

His  malady  kept  lingering,  with  fresh  re- 
currences followed  by  partial  allayments. 
What  could  be  the  matter?  It  is  clear  that 
his  trouble  was  psychical  as  well  as  physical ; 
his  own  people  saw  the  fact,  even  his  father. 
We  have  to .  think  that  especially  Fraulein 
Von  Klettenburg  glimpsed  to  the  bottom  the 
source  of  his  illness.  We  see  by  his  letters 
of  this  time  that  he  could  not  free  himself  of 
recurrent  paroxyms  of  love  for  Katharina 
Schonkopf.  To  her  he  continues  to  send  a 
letter  once  a  month  when  able.  He  dreams 
of  her,  dreams  that  she  is  married,  and  at 
once  writes  to  her  asking  if  it  be  so.  In  a 
letter  written  more  than  fifteen  months  after 
his  arrival  at  Frankfort  he  confesses  to  her : 
"My  body  is  restored  but  my  soul  is  not  yet 
healed ; ' '  so  he  will  have  in  consequence  phys- 
ical regurgitations  of  his  malady.  He  cries 
out  to  her  in  vain  regret:  "If  I  were  now 


HOME  AGAIN.  87 

,<• 

with  you,  how  delighted  would  I  pass  my  life ! 

0  if  I  could  recall  the  two  and  a  half  years 
of  Leipzig !"     He  seems    to    intimate  some 
dark  threat  or  stroke  of  fate:    "I  have   al- 
ways said  that  my  destiny  depends  on  yours. 
You  will  perhaps  soon  see  how  true  is  what 

1  have  spoken,  perhaps  you  will  soon  hear 
news  which  you  do  not  expect. ' '    He  remem- 
bers still  with  a  touch  of  jealousy  "all  the 
admirers  big  and  little,  crooked  and  straight, 
whom  you  have  salted  down  with  your  friend- 
ship. "    He  answered  Katharina's    reproof: 
"You  are  right,  I  am  now  punished  for  the 
sins  I  committed  at  Leipzig."    Finally  after 
an  absence  of  more  than  a  year  and  a  quar- 
ter he  summons  courage  to  make  tLe  grand 
renunciation;  he  will  not  write  to  her  more, 
and  he  begs  her  not  to  write  to  him :    "I  wish 
never  again  to  see  your  hand  nor  hear  your 
voice ;  I  suffer  enough  that  my  dreams  are  so 
busy."    Of  course  he  refuses  to  write  a  poem 
celebrating  her  coming  nuptials  with  another 
man,  which  poem  it  seems  she,  with  unique 
daring,  had  requested:    "I  would  be  sure  to 
say  too  much  or  too  little."     Still  the  next 
month  he  sends  her  a  good  long  letter  which 
he  preludes  with  an  apology  for  breaking  his 
resolution  "never  to  take  up  pen  again  to 
write  to  you."    He  intends  to  go  to  Stras- 
burg  for  a  course  in  the  University  and  we 


88  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

hear  the  request :  "  Will  you  not  write  to  me 
at  Strasburg? "  He  winds  up  the  epistle  with 
an  outlook:  "In  two  years  I  shall  be  back; 
I  have  a  house,  I  have  money.  Heart,  what  is 
thy  desire  1  A  wife.  > ' 

Such  is  the  new  disclipine  of  love  which 
Phileros,  heart-sick  and  brain-sick,  has  re- 
ceived from  the  Leipzig  girl — a  long  weary 
illness  threatening  mind  and  body.  He  has 
experienced  the  pangs  of  the  hopelessly  re- 
jected lover — the  penalty  of  his  own  con- 
duct; he  has  seen  a  rival  step  into  his  shoes, 
in  spite  of  repeated  attempts  to  storm  anew 
the  fortress.  Still  he  has  largely  recovered, 
as  he  says,  his  health  and  composure.  How 
was  this  brought  about?  Hereby  hangs  a 
fresh  deep  experience  of  the  man  long  to  be 
remembered  and  in  time  to  be  duly  recorded 
in  a  literary  confession. 

Already  the  presence  of  Fraulein  Von  Klet- 
tenburg  has  been  noted  at  the  bedside  of 
young  Wolfgang,  with  her  peculiar  ministra- 
tion of  help.  Her  fundamental  trait  lay  in 
her  religious  character:  she  held  or  claimed 
she  held,  immediate  communion  with  the  In- 
visible One  and  from  that  source  derived 
special  aid  and  power.  Through  her  the  suf- 
ferer becomes  religious,  and  gets  to  know  her 
spiritual  associates :  the  Herrnhuters.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  her  remedial  power  lay  in  her 


HOME  AGAIN.  89 

.£• 

psychical  influence  over  the  rent  soul  of  the 
hapless  lover.  Hers  was  a  healing  presence 
and  her  talk  medicined  not  the  body  but  self- 
lacerating  spirit.  Goethe  has  left  an  eternal 
picture  of  her  pure  womanliness  and  also  of 
her  inner  evolution  in  the  "Confessions  of  a 
Fair  Soul,"  which  form  a  part  of  his  novel, 
Wilhelm  Meister's  Apprenticeship.  She  was 
probably  his  most  direct  experience  of  the 
Woman-Soul,  or  the  Eternal-Womanly  in  its 
religious  mystical  exaltation. 

Now  Fraulein  Von  Klettenburg  had  also 
gone  through  her  sore  trials  of  love  disap- 
pointed in  her  younger  days.  Her  training 
accordingly,  prepares  her  to  be  the  medi- 
atrix of  the  youthful  Goethe  in  his  present 
desperate  tribulation.  She  had  risen  through 
a  fruitless  particular  love  to  a  fruitful  uni- 
versal love  which  brought  her  into  immedi- 
ate participation  with  God.  Through  her 
the  wild  estranged  soul  of  our  Phileros 
sought  to  know  that  Upper  World  which  the 
blessed  ministrant  lived  in.  According  to 
his  account  of  her  life,  she  passes  through 
three  loves,  all  with  disappointment,  but  rises 
above  them  into  heavenly  love,  and  becomes 
mediatiorial  for  those  who  have  had  the  same 
affliction. 

So  our  Phileros,  though  he  has  occasional 
outbursts  of  misogyny  in  his  letters,  realizes 


90  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

the  woman  as  mediator,  as  savior  in  this  long 
desperate  struggle,  physical  and  psychical,  of 
eighteen  months,  with  the  dark  powers  of 
death.  Never  will  he  forget  the  lesson;  it  is 
stamped  upon  all  his  art  at  its  highest  mo- 
ments. Again  and  again  will  he  portray  the 
woman  as  divinely  gifted  with  reconciliation 
for  the  guilty  despairing  man,  moulding  her 
character  out  of  far  better  and  purer  mate- 
rial than  his  men,  necessarily  more  or  less 
copied  after  himself. 

Thus  the  old  Goethe  (of  the  Autobiogra- 
phy) looks  back  at  the  young  Goethe  in  his 
first  soul-transforming  discipline  of  love.  It 
is  an  ordeal  which  opens  death's  door  where 
he  peeps  in,  yea  is  on  the  point  of  passing  in, 
when  a  saintly  hand  reaches  forth  and  slowly 
draws  him  back,  mediating  him  anew  with 
life.  Phileros,  the  lover  of  love,  has  in  this 
deepest  remedial  experience  become  ac- 
quainted with  a  new  kind  of  love,  we  may 
call  it  Love  universal,  which  is  the  supreme 
fruitage  of  fate  transcended  through  suffer- 
ing, the  crucifixion  re-enacted  through  the 
loving  heart  of  a  woman,  whose  mediatorial 
power  Goethe  now  feels  and  beholds  in  his 
own  restoration  and  redemption.  Such  a  fe- 
male character  starts  from  this  present 
Frankfort  experience  with  Fraulein  Von 
Klettenburg  and  moves  through  all  his  best 


HOMfi  AGAIN.  91 

.4- 

works,  appearing  at  the  top  of  their  highest 
fulfilment. 

Such  a  process  is  profoundly  religious  in 
the  universal  sense;  but  the  special  religion 
of  routine  and  dogma  will  turn  denier  of  it, 
as  not  being  its  way,  and  possibly  damn  it  as 
heretical  if  not  blasphemous.  Phileros,  it 
would  seem,  cannot  be  saved  by  the  beaten 
track  of  salvation,  and  great  is  the  outcry. 
Still  the  main  point  is  to  save  him,  sinner 
that  he  is,  and  to  heal  him,  that  he  may  pro- 
claim the  new  evangel  of  his  redemption, 
which  is  the  literary,  not  the  theological, 
though  the  latter  too  has  its  place  in  the  Di- 
vine Order.  The  spiritual  deliverance  must 
be  won,  be  the  form  religious  or  sacrilegious, 
orthodox  or  heretical,  Christian  or  heathen. 
Hence  we  cannot  seriously  listen  to  the  cler- 
ical Mephistopheles  at  this  point  with  his 
scoffing  denials  and  damnations,  for  can  we 
not  see  our  bad  boy  Phileros  emerging  from 
the  valley  and  shadow  of  his  own  Satanic 
deeds,  through  a  strange  remedial  process 
healing  and  hallowing  him  at  least,  and 
doubtless  others? 

So  young  Goethe  is  well  again,  and  ready 
to  take  a  fresh  stride  in  life's  journey.  His 
outer  traditional  education  is  by  no  means 
complete, — his  father  still  insists  upon  mak- 
ing him  a  lawyer,  but  to  Leipzig  he  cannot 


92  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

return  for  a  number  of  reasons,  open  and 
secret.  To  the  University  of  Strassburg  he 
will  turn,  where  a  new  stage  of  experience 
awaits  him. 


VI. 

At  the  University  of  Strassburg. 

One  more  step  we  have  now  to  consider  in 
Goethe's  prescriptive  Epoch,  as  we  have 
hitherto  called  it,  when  his  father  sends  the 
youth  to  the  University  for  another  tilt  at 
Jurisprudence.  He  will  again  obey  parental 
authority,  but  the  study  of  the  law  will  be  the 
least  of  his  cares.  He  will  follow  his  bent 
and  harvest  a  fresh  crop  of  life 's  own  teach- 
ings not  laid  down  in  the  curriculum.  Toward 
Art  and  Literature  push  all  his  thought  and 
striving ;  his  education  goes  to  school  to  itself, 
makes  its  own  course  and  graduates  him  with 
a  unique  outfit  for  his  real  vocation  which  is 
not  the  legal  one. 

And  let  it  not  be  forgotten !  in  this  flower- 
ing of  his  adolescence,  he  will  not  fail  to  re- 
enact  the  part  of  Phileros  in  a  new  and  far- 
famed  drama  of  love.  He  has  told  it  under 
several  forms ;  it  drove  him  to  poetic  produc- 
tion whose  echoes  throbbed  still  in  his  old- 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBURG.          93 

age.  The  story  of  Frederika  of  Sessenheim 
belongs  to  those  years  of  the  poet  and  has 
gained  through  his  magic  touch  a  tender  im- 
mortality which  calls  forth  pilgrimages  to 
this  shrine  of  love.  Hence  in  the  present  life- 
poem  of  Goethe  the  Strassburg  episode  rays 
forth  far-illumining  flashes  over  his  whole 
activity.  The  environment  of  the  place  and 
the  time  acted  creatively  upon  him  and  he 
reacted  in  turn,  winning  a  new  utterance  of 
himself. 

Says  Goethe  in  a  significant  passage :  '  '  The 
chief  function  of  Biography  seems  to  be  this : 
to  set  forth  the  man  in  his  relations  to  his 
time,  and  to  show  how  far  the  great  Whole 
of  which  he  is  a  part  has  resisted  him  or  has 
favored  him,  then  how  he  has  elaborated  out 
of  such  a  situation  his  view  of  the  world  and 
of  man,  still  further  how  he  has  mirrored 
that  view  of  his  outwardly,  as  artist,  poet,  or 
author/'  This  is  taken  from  the  Introduc- 
tion to  his  own  Life  as  written  by  himself 
and  touches  upon  these  elements :  the  individ- 
ual, his  environing  age,  his  world-view,  and 
his  production. 

I.  At  Strassburg  Goethe  enters  an  en- 
tirely new  set  of  circumstances,  we  might 
title  it  a  new  world.  In  general  this  may  be 
called  Teutonic,  he  becomes  decidedly  Teu- 
tonized  in  that  city  of  the  borderland,  he  be- 


94  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

gins  to  take  possession  of  his  nation 's  spir- 
itual heritage.  Now  the  strange  fact  is  that 
French  or  Latin  culture  dominated  at  Leip- 
zig which  rather  rejoiced  in  being  designated 
as  "a  little  Paris. "  The  professors  there  on 
the  whole  ignored  the  new  movement  in  Ger- 
man Literature,  even  if  one  of  them,  Thomas- 
ius,  had  formerly  changed  his  University  lec- 
tures from  Latin  to  the  vernacular.  At 
Frankfort  the  people  were  politically  divided 
into  the  German  and  French  parties,  as  we 
have  seen  in  Goethe 's  own  family ;  but  other- 
wise that  city  seems  to  have  been  largely  a 
center  of  indifference.  Yet  at  Strassburg  the 
change  to  Teutonia  was  marked,  and  in  Goe- 
the's case  was  intensified  by  unforeseen  oc- 
currences, such  for  instance  as  the  fortuitous 
advent  of  Herder. 

So  it  came  about  on  the  second  day  of 
April,  1770,  that  young  Wolfgang  Goethe, 
not  yet  twenty-one  years  old  by  some  months, 
crossed  the  Ehine  at  Kehl  bridge,  entered 
Strassburg  and  took  lodgings  as  a  student 
where  he  was  destined  to  stay  nearly  a  year 
and  a  half  (till  August,  1771).  It  was  indeed 
a  pivotal  turn  of  his  life,  in  a  number  of  ways 
premonitory  of  his  coming  career ;  he  repeat- 
edly gives  to  his  narrative  of  it  a  vein  of 
forecast.  That  river  Khine  flows  through 
German  legend,  song,  history,  and  it  is  not 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBURG.          95 

.4- 

done  flowing  yet.  It  was  the  old  boundary 
line  between  Teuton  and  Celt  in  the  twilight 
of  time;  then  between  Teuton  and  Roman, 
when  it  begins  to  stream  into  human  record. 
Strangely  Goethe  crossed  the  Ehine  into  Al- 
sace to  become  conscious  of  his  own  Teutonic 
spirit  there;  a  century  later  the  German  ar- 
mies passed  that  same  Rhine  to  take  posses- 
sion of  what  they  deemed  their  own.  It  is 
curious  to  observe  how  many  German  writers 
of  today  regard  Goethe's  act  as  typical  of 
their  supreme  national  deed  in  the  Franco- 
German  war.  The  greatest  German  man 
passed  the  battle-line  as  the  protagonist  of 
his  folk  and  the  forerunner  of  the  united 
German  nation,  to  whose  spirit  he  is  to  give 
its  latest  and  highest  utterance  in  its  highest 
domain. 

The  people  of  Alsace  had  been  under 
French  rule  for  nearly  a  century,  but  they 
had  remained  German  to  the  core,  preserv- 
ing their  German  tongue,  customs  and  even 
costumes,  especially  in  the  rural  portion  of 
the  land.  To  be  sure  over  the  higher  classes 
was  varnished  a  thin  layer  of  French  cul- 
ture, supported  by  officialdom  and  the  sol- 
diery. A  certain  defiance  was  developed  just 
in  this  borderland  against  the  ruling  stranger, 
who  might  govern  externally  but  could  not 
sway  the  heart  and  the  intellect.  Into  this 


96  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST, 

peculiar  social  environment  with  its  ever- 
active  secret  protest  against  the  outsider  and 
its  dream  of  deliverance,  Goethe  came,  and 
he  felt  the  throb.  At  the  dinner-table  the 
students  conversed  only  in  German;  food, 
cookery  and  everything  else  took  the  Teu- 
tonic flavor.  From  German  Leipzig  in  the 
heart  of  the  Fatherland,  Goethe  wrote  often 
French  letters;  but  from  French  Strassburg 
over  the  frontier  his  letters  are  German.  So 
too  are  his  thoughts,  so  too  is  his  poetry,  the 
latter  undergoing  quite  a  transformation  in 
form  and  content.  Such  was  the  social  at- 
mosphere which  Goethe  now  breathed  and 
began  to  relish.  It  should  be  added,  however, 
that  during  the  century  after  Goethe,  the  Al- 
sations  changed  a  good  deal,  and  went  decid- 
edly Frenchward;  in  that  attitude  the  Ger- 
man troops  found  them  at  the  last  invasion, 
and  so  it  is  said  they  remain  today,  after  more 
than  forty  years  of  German  rule. 

II.  And  now  can  we  catch  the  object  which 
first  centered  Goethe's  attention  and  held  it 
to  the  end,  during  his  entire  stay  at  Strass- 
burg? That  was  the  famous  Cathedral  which 
he  first  sees  towering  in  the  distance  as  he 
approaches  the  city  and  to  which  he  hurries 
eagerly  as  soon  as  he  has  alighted  at  the  inn. 
Hear  him:  "I  hastened  off  to  satisfy  my 
dearest  wish  and  to  get  to  the  Cathedral 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBURG.          97 

.*• 

which  had  long  been  pointed  out  by  my  fel- 
low travelers,  and  had  remained  in  my  eye 
for  quite  a  distance.  As  I  first  perceived 
this  colossus  through  the  narrow  alley,  and 
then  stood  before  it  upon  the  small  square, 
it  made  upon  me  a  very  peculiar  impression, 
which  I  was  unable  to  develop  on  the  spot,  but 
wrhich  I  bore  about  with  me  unconsciously/' 
Then  he  ascended  the  structure,  and  took  a 
view  of-  the  beautiful  country  around  him  as 
it  lay  in  the  sunshine  with  all  its  varied 
scenery,  through  which  threaded  the  Rhine 
along  its  green  shores  and  islands  and  cas- 
tles. Finally  he  descended  and  stood  before 
the  venerable  pile  gazing  at  its  f agade ;  what 
it  all  meant  he  could  not  then  understand, 
but  he  treasured  up  his  impression,  and  con- 
tinued to  let  "the  astonishing  monument 
work  upon  me  quietly  through  its  presence/' 
Such  we  may  call  a  kind  of  key-note  to  his 
whole  Strassburg  period  struck  here  at  the 
very  beginning  and  kept  up  to  the  last.  The 
sight  of  the  edifice  seems  to  start  some  germ- 
inal emotions  lying  far  down  in  the  uncon- 
scious depths  of  his  soul-life.  He  will  study 
its  plan,  observe  its  unfinished  parts  and  will 
complete  them  in  idea ;  he  will  go  back  to  its 
medieval  origin,  and  grope  after  its  builder 
or  builders ;  it  becomes  a  sort  of  daily  repast 
to  his  creative  genius,  as  he  looks  upon  it  at 


98  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.- PART  FIRST. 

all  hours,  going  and  coming,  under  every  va- 
riety of  illumination  by  sun  and  moon,  in  the 
distance  and  close  at  hand,  as  one  great  to- 
tality, yet  with  infinite  details.  Its  echoes 
kept  thrilling  in  him  long  after  he  had  left 
Strassburg,  as  we  see  in  the  essay  written  up- 
on it  later  at  Frankfort.  In  fact  the  effect  of 
it  flowed  over  into  his  poetry  in  a  secret 
stream  of  inspiration,  as  he  himself  remarked 
in  speaking  of  those  strongly  tinged  Teutonic 
works  of  his,  Gotz  and  Faust :  "The  Strass- 
burg Cathedral  left  in  me  a  very  potent  im- 
pression which  can  very  well  stand  as  the 
background  of  such  poems. ' '  So  he  declares 
calmly  looking  fack  from  the  gray  hairs  of 
his  Autobiography;  but  we  also  have  the  ad- 
vantage, in  the  aforementioned  essay,  of  lis- 
tening to  some  of  his  youthful  dithyrambic 
ecstasies  of  utterance:  "With  what  unex- 
pected emotion  did  the  view  take  hold  of  me 
as  I  stood  before  the  structure!  How  did  I 
return  to  it  from  all  sides  to  behold  its  dig- 
nity and  glory!  How  fresh  fell  its  morning 
gleam  upon  me!  With  what  joy  I  stretched 
out  my  arms  toward  it,  observing  its  huge, 
harmonious  masses  alive  down  to  its  count- 
less small  parts,  as  in  the  works  of  eternal 
nature !  How  easily  did  the  colossal  edifice  lift 
itself  up  heavenward,  infinitely  divided  and 
yet  everlastingly  one!  Thereupon  revealed 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBURG.          99 

itself  to  me  in  gentle  anticipations  the  genius 
of  the  master-builder."  This  was  Ervinus 
a  Steinbach  whom  Goethe  thanks  for  his 
great  lesson,  "that  a  drop  of  the  spirit's  ec~ 
stacy  sinks  down  into  my  soul"  and  makes  it 
creative  along  with  thine!  Evidently  the 
poet  thought  that  the  vision  of  that  great 
original  act  of  creation  was  what  kindled  him 
to  creation,  and  so  he  continued  to  commune 
with  it  as  a  sort  of  divine  revelation  in  the 
form  of  art,  and  as  a  source  of  productive 
power. 

Moreover  it  should  be  noted  that  Goethe 
was  prepared  to  feel  the  religious  inspira- 
tion of  the  mighty  temple  of  God.  He  came 
to  Strassburg  still  throbbing  with  the  sacred 
words  of  his  Frankfort  priestess,  Fraulein 
Von  Klettenberg.  His  early  letters  from 
Strassburg  have  a  tinge  of  religious  fervor, 
indeed  of  pietism  which  we  shall  hunt  for  in 
vain  through  the  rest  of  his  life.  A  few  days 
after  his  arrival  he  writes :  "As  I  was,  I  am 
still,  except  that  I  stand  somewhat  better 
with  our  Lord  God,  and  with  his  dear  Son 
Jesus  Christ."  That  does  not  sound  much 
like  Goethe's  strain,  though  we  hold  that  he 
always  had  religiosity  if  not  much  religion. 
Then  in  another  letter :  "I  am  altered,  much 
altered,  for  which  I  thank  my  Savior" — 
which  seems  to  imply  his  own  belief  in  his 


100  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

conversion.  After  almost  five  months'  stay 
in  Strassburg  he  writes  a  letter  to  Fraulein 
Von  Klettenberg :  "I  have  been  today  to  the 
Holy  Communion  to  keep  in  mind  the  passion 
and  death  of  our  Lord,"  and  goes  on  to  ex- 
press his  devotion  still  to  "my  Count"  Zin- 
zendorf,  the  Herrnhuter.  It  has  also  been 
handed  down  by  Goethe's  mother  that  on  his 
arrival  at  Strassburg,  he,  the  first  day  read 
this  passage  of  Isaiah,  to  his  great  comfort: 
"Enlarge  the  place  of  thy  tent  and  let  them 
stretch  forth  the  curtains  of  thy  habitations ; 
spare  not,  lengthen  thy  cords  and  strengthen 
thy  stakes,  for  thou  shalt  break  forth  on  the 
right  and  on  the  left" — which  Goethe  cen- 
tainly  did  at  Strassburg  in  accord  with  the 
prophet's  exhortation,  if  not  altogether  in 
consequence  of  it. 

And  now  this  outbreak  "on  the  right  and 
on  the  left"  is  what  we  are  next  to  trace  in 
its  outlines.  It  is  true  that  he  had  come  to 
the  University  again  to  finish  his  course  of 
Jurisprudence  in  compliance  with  the  wish  of 
his  father.  But  he  soon  found  that  with  the 
help  of  a  private  tutor  or  drill-master  he  need 
not  be  troubled  much  about  that  study,  which 
with  all  his  efforts  he  could  not  like.  So  he 
was  left  free  to  range  in  obedience  to  his  in- 
ner bent  '  '  on  the  right  and  on  the  left. ' ' 

III.    The  first  matter  to  be  noticed  in  this 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBURG.        101 

.<*• 

connection  is  Goethe's  strong  reaction 
against  everything  French  —  art,  science, 
philosophy,  language,  especially  against  the 
all-dominating  French  Literature  with  its 
European  prestige.  Goethe  himself  has  dwelt 
upon  this  fact  at  some  length  in  his  Autobi- 
ography (Eleventh  Book).  In  Alsace  he 
found  everywhere  an  attachment  to  the  old 
imperial  constitution,  to  German  speech,  folk- 
lore, traditions.  The  political  abuses  of 
French  administration  already  caused  proph- 
esies of  a  coming  upheaval.  French  Litera- 
ture, represented  in  the  aged  Voltaire  had 
become  senile,  with  an  implied  contrast  which 
at  least  suggests  the  new  youthful  German 
Literature. 

To  be  sure  Goethe  will  later  react  consid- 
erably against  this  reaction.  French  culture 
had  been  implanted  too  deep  within  him  and 
had  too  many  points  in  harmony  with  his  uni- 
versal spirit  to  be  banned  from  his  life  for- 
ever. He  will  return  to  France,  to  the  Latin 
world,  and  especially  to  the  great  classical 
heritage  of  the  race's  spiritual  treasures. 
That  will  form  a  long  chapter  in  his  future 
development. 

But  now  his  call  is  to  Teutonize  himself  in 
preparation  for  his  task.  That  Cathedral 
uttering  the  Teutonic  folk-soul  from  its  ele- 
mental sources  we  have  noted  as  the  object 


102  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

which  struck  the  deepest  national  chord  in 
Goethe.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  the  Gothic 
style  did  not  originate  among  a  German- 
speaking  people.  In  northern  Europe  it  is 
first  found  in  Normandy  where  Norsemen,  a 
Teutonic  stock  had  settled,  but  had  adopted 
the  French  language  and  culture.  But  the 
Pointed  Arch,  the  determining  feature  of 
Gothicism  in  architecture,  has  been  traced  to 
Sicily,  to  Mahomedan  structures,  even  to  old 
Egypt  and  Assyria.  Still  it  was  the  Teutonic 
spirit  in  France,  England  and  Germany, 
which  seized  upon  the  Pointed  Arch  as  its 
own  supreme  expression  in  art,  as  the  outer 
manifestation  of  its  own  deepest  feeling  of 
selfhood.  The  Pointed  Arch,  like  some  other 
architectural  forms,  had  to  wander  thousands 
of  years  before  it  found  its  own  people.  So 
Goethe,  if  not  accurate  historically,  was  right 
in  the  deepest  sense  when  he  took  the  vast 
Gothic  minster  at  Strassburg  as  a  mighty  ut- 
terance of  the  Teutonic  folk-soul,  and  still 
further  of  himself. 

The  colossality  of  the  edifice  must  be  re- 
garded as  an  important  part  of  the  impress 
left  upon  the  poet's  mind.  It  stands  there  as 
an  enormous  Titan  seemingly  breaking  forth 
into  thousands  of  shapes  each  of  which  im- 
ages the  whole.  The  grand  outbreak  "on  the 
right  and  on  the  left"  foreshadowed  by  the 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBURG.        103 

prophet  he  could  behold  in  visible  reality  be- 
fore him,  and  that  reality  also  became  pro- 
phetic in  his  soul.  The  magnitude  of  the 
Cathedral's  appearance  begat  a  correspond- 
ing magnitude  of  expression  in  his  genius. 
Those  furious  power-words  of  his  which  are 
soon  to  burst  forth  into  German  literature, 
have  a  deep  inner  kinship  with  the  huge 
Gothic  pile  talking  itself  out  into  its  multi- 
tudinous shapes.  That  is,  Goethe  is  not  only 
to  be  Teutonized  but  also  Titanized  at  Strass 
burg,  where  the  Titanic  minster  contributes 
its  influence. 

To  the  German  mind  he  is  on  the  whole  re- 
garded as  the  third  great  or  greatest  hero  of 
Teutonia  against  Roma.  First  comes  Ar- 
minius  (Herrmann),  more  mythical  than  his- 
torical, a  nebulous  but  gigantic  figure  rising 
up  in  the  cloudy  North  and  overwhelming  the 
ancient  Roman  legions  in  defence  of  the 
Fatherland.  Second  is  Luther  with  his  es- 
sentially Teutonic  revolt  against  the  second 
or  papal  Rome  in  behalf  of  religious  free- 
dom. Third  is  Goethe,  the  modern  hero  of 
Teutonia,  not  a  political  nor  a  religious  here, 
but  a  cultural  hero  we  may  call  him,  starting 
to  break  the  more  recent  Latin  fetters  of  the 
spirit,  chiefly  in  literature.  Now  there  comes 
to  his  aid  unexpectedly,  as  if  sent  by  Pallas 
Athena,  who  loves  the  youth,  a  man  that  is 


104  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

to  train  him  for  his  pivotal  vocation  as  well 
as  to  furnish  him  with  his  chief  weapons  of 
warfare. 

IV.  This  was  Johann  Gottfried  Herder, 
who  had  by  seeming  chance  dropped  down 
into  Strassburg  to  be  treated  for  a  disease  of 
the  eyes.  He  was  born  of  humble  parents  in 
Mohrungen,  a  town  of  East  Prussia,  in  1744, 
so  that  he  was  26  years  old  when  he  first  saw 
Goethe.  He  was  already  fully  matured  and 
had  written  two  of  his  chief  works,  critical 
but  full  also  of  inspiration.  The  philosopher 
Kant  at  Koenigsberg  had  taken  part  in  his 
early  training,  but  a  peculiar,  mystical,  yet 
deep-seeing  German  writer  by  the  name  of 
Hamann  who  had  especially  inducted  him  in- 
to the  appreciation  of  Shakespeare,  had  ex- 
erted the  main  influence  over  him.  Coming 
by  way  of  Paris,  he  had  seen  and  conversed 
writh  the  distinguished  literary  lights  of  the 
French  capital;  the  result,  however,  was  an 
intense  disgust,  which  on  the  whole  fitted  in- 
to the  Alsatian  mood  as  well  as  into  that  of 
Goethe.  The  latter,  having  already  heard  of 
the  arrival  of  the  distinguished  stranger, 
hunted  him  up  and  established  a  bond  of 
friendship  with  him  which  lasted  with  consid- 
erable fluctuations  during  his  life-time.  In 
the  Autobiography  Goethe  gives  quite  a  full 
and  appreciative  account  of  Herder,  starting 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBURG.        105 

with  this  prelude  of  recognition :  ' '  The  most 
important  event,  the  one  which  was  to  have 
the  weightiest  consequences  for  me  was  my 
acquaintance  with  Herder,  and  the  close  con- 
nection with  him  springing  from  the  same." 
Goethe  had  been  in  Strassburg  some  six 
months  before  the  arrival  of  Herder,  brows- 
ing about  a  good  deal  in  a  general  way,  study- 
ing a  little  jurisprudence,  reading  much  in  a 
desultory  fashion,  conversing  at  the  table 
with  companions,  some  older  and  some  per- 
chance younger,  but  all  of  them  his  inferiors. 
The  outcome  was  a  certain  spirit  of  intellec- 
tual domination  and  of  .youthful  self-conceit 
in  the  young  fellow  which  for  his  own  good 
had  to  be  taken  out  of  him.  Now  Herder 
was  just  the  man  for  such  an  operation  in 
pedagogical  surgery.  Goethe  narrates :  "By 
various  questions  he  sought  to  make  himself 
acquainted  with  my  situation,  and  his  power 
of  attraction  worked  upon  me  with  increasing 
energy.  I  was  in  general  of  a  very  confiding 
nature,  and  before  him,  I  withheld  no  se- 
crets. '  '  So  young  ambition  with  its  egotism 
lets  out  all  its  great  plans,  when  comes  the 
backstroke.  "It  was  not  long  before  the  re- 
pellent pulse  of  his  nature  began  to  show 
itself,  and  precipitated  me  into  a  state  of  no 
small  disagreeableness.  I  spoke  of  my  occu- 
pations with  some  self-satisfaction,  but  he 


106  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

was  of  a  different  opinion,  he  not  only  con- 
demned my  interest  in  such  things,  but  made 
it  ridiculous  even  to  myself  almost  to  the 
point  of  disgust/'  A  new  sort  of  discipline 
is  that,  very  different  from  the  admiration 
and  even  flattery  which  he  received  and  ex- 
pected from  his  young  associates  at  the  din- 
ner table,  who  echoed  him  and  themselves 
with  much  hearty  applause.  But  be  it  said 
to  the  credit  of  the  youth  that  he  recognizes 
the  teacher  whom  the  Gods  seem  to  have 
sent  him  with  a  divine  purpose ;  the  castiga- 
tion  of  that  awful  tongue  he  is  going  to  en- 
dure for  the  sake  of  the  treasures  which  it 
pours  out  with  its  gall.  Gentle  is  his  com- 
plaint :  "I  had  much  to  suffer  from  his  spirit 
of  contradiction, "  still  the  aspiring  youth 
will  hold  on  in  spite  of  lacerations  till  the 
blood  trickles.  Whf  does  he  not  quit?  He 
cannot;  well  does  he  know  that  he  has  dis- 
covered just  the  man  to  supply  his  soul's 
deepest  needs. 

It  may  be  said  that  Goethe  has  now  found 
his  true  University — not  Leipzig,  not  Strass- 
burg;  but  the  University  of  Herder,  upon 
whose  course  he  enters  with  unremitting  in- 
dustry. "During  the  whole  time  of  this  ill- 
ness I  visited  Herder  mornings  and  evenings ; 
indeed  I  stayed  entire  days  with  him  and  ac- 
customed myself  the  more  willingly  to  his 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBURG.       107 

.#• 

scolding  and  fault-finding,  as  I  learned  daily 
to  put  a  higher  value  upon  his  fine  and  great 
qualities,  his  very  extensive  knowledge  and 
his  deep  insights. ' '  So  Goethe  kept  going  to 
the  bedside  of  the  sick  giant,  and  performing 
all  sorts  of  little  services  for  him,  since  that 
gave  the  unique  opportunity.  But  the  deed 
of  kindness  had  to  be  done  without  the  thanks 
of  the  recipient  who  could  even  launch  a  sar- 
casm at  his  benefactor  in  the  act  of  helping 
him.  Goethe  declares  that  "nobody  could 
ever  expect  a  word  of  approval  from  Herder, 
let  one  try  as  one  might. "  That  was  cer- 
tainly not  pleasant,  but  the  pupil  holds  on 
with  grip  unshaken;  for  listen  to  those  con- 
versations '  *  which  were  always  full  of  mean- 
ing, whether  the  teacher  was  answering  a 
question  or  asking  it,  or  otherwise  imparting 
himself;  thus  he  kept  advancing  me  to  new 
views  daily,  yea  hourly."  How  narrow 
seems  now 'Leipzig  and  Frankfort,  and  even 
Strassburg,  as  it  was  hitherto!  "Of  a  sud- 
den I  was  made  acquainted  through  Herder 
with  the  whole  new  movement  of  the  time  and 
with  all  the  special  directions  which  it  seemed 
to  take."  Still  mid  these  unspeakable  bless- 
ings the  counterblast  of  fiery  damnation 
would  fall  upon  the  eager  youth,  "causing  ir. 
me  a  diremption  which  I  had  never  experi- 
enced before  in  my  life. ' '  So  the  spoilt  child 


108  GOETHE'8  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

of  genius  has  to  take  big  doses  of  bitter  med- 
icine f^om  that  sick  couch  till  he  may  well 
query,  Which  is  the  patient,  I  or  he?  Both 
are  indeed  undergoing  treatment,  but  for 
very  different  troubles.  Thus  Goethe  pays 
his  school  fees  to  the  university  Herder,  but 
receives  untold  reward. 
.  What  did  our  poet  receive  from  this  inter- 
course! A  new  appreciation  of  the  world's 
greatest  Literature;  Herder  revealed  espe- 
cially Shakespeare  to  Goethe,  who  will  soon 
make  the  English  dramatist  his  poetic  start- 
ing-point. Other  authors  were  read  and  com- 
mented on :  Homer,  Ossian,  Goldsmith,  whose 
Vicar  of  Wakefield  has  a  notable  place  in  this 
Strassburg  experience  of  Goethe,  since  he 
will  make  it  reflect  his  love-idyl  of  Sessen- 
heim.  But  Shakespeare  is  the  elemental 
Genius  who  seems  to  draw  from  the  same 
sources  as  the  builder  of  the  Strasburg  ca- 
thedral. 

Moreover  Herder  taught  his  pupil  to  go 
back  to  the  folk-soul  as  the  original  fountain 
of  poetry.  In  this  spirit  he  explained  much 
of  the  Hebrew  Bible,  as  he  was  a  theologian 
by  profession.  He  deeply  appreciated 
Percy's  Reliques  and  ballads  of  the  people; 
under  his  inspiration  Goethe  began  collect- 
ing the  folk-songs  of  Alsace,  and  wrote  some 
of  his  own.  Herder  had  largely  wrought  out 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBURG.       109 

and  applied  one  of  the  sentences  of  his 
teacher  Hamann:  "Poetry  is  the  mother- 
tongue  of  the  human  race. ' '  Moreover  he  in- 
sisted upon  the  poet's  employment  of  one 
language  which  is  also  to  be  carried  back  to 
its  well-head  in  the  folk-soul ;  German  speech 
became  a  leading  tenet  of  his  poetic  and  pa- 
triotic creed. 

Still  Herder  had  his  decided  spiritual  limi- 
tations leaving  out  the  matter  of  temper. 
His  insights  were  sudden  jets  bursting  up  at 
random  from  the  unseen  depths  with  marvel- 
ous power  and  brilliancy  but  with  little  inner 
coherence.  Herder  to  the  end  of  his  days 
could  not  form,  having  no  native  ability  to 
organize  his  separate  thoughts  into  one  great 
totality.  To  the  entire  body  of  his  works 
might  be  given  the  title  of  his  first  book  which 
he  called  "Fragments,"  the  key-word  of  his 
talent  and  his  character.  Herder  himself  is 
a  Fragment,  but  a  great  and  glorious  one, 
whose  essence  lay  in  its  enormous  power  of 
stimulating  others  to  make  it  whole.  So  he 
stirred  Goethe  to  a  higher  completeness,  al- 
together transcending  his  own  fragmentary 
nature.  Moreover,  Herder  bloomed  rapidly 
and  early  to  what  he  became;  at  Strassburg 
he  was  doubtless  in  his  very  flower,  which 
Goethe  plucked  and  went  on,  making  the  won- 
derful fragment  integral  in  himself  and  in 
his  work. 


110  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

But  alongside  of  this  Herderian  fountain 
another  source  was  tapped  by  the  youth,  even 
deeper  and  more  compelling,  that  of  love, 
and  it  began  to  overflow  and  quicken  into  the 
fairest  romance  of  life.  The  part  of  Phileros 
cannot  be  left  out  at  Strassburg,  still  less  can 
the  part  of  Frederika. 

V.  It  is  now  accepted  as  a  wee  dot  of  bio- 
graphic fact  that  Goethe  first  visited  the 
parsonage  of  Sessenheim,  a  village  distant 
several  hours'  ride  from  Strassburg,  on  the 
13th  of  October,  1770.  There  he  met  Fred- 
erika Brion,  the  third  daughter  of  Pastor 
Brion,  then  in  her  nineteenth  year,  and  at 
once  the  fairest  romance  of  Goethe's  life  be- 
gan spinning  itself  in  the  deed.  The  result- 
ing love-affair  became  a  very  important  phase 
of  the  poet's  human  discipline;  it  started  to 
flowing  the  deepest  springs  of  his  emotional 
existence,  while  Herder  had  stirred  quite  at 
the  same  time  the  intellectual  side  of  his  na- 
ture. Furthermore,  according  to  his  own 
confession  repeated  again  and  again  it  flung 
him  into  guilt,  and  turned  the  Furies  loose 
upon  him  for  retribution,  like  a  second  Ores- 
tes. In  consequence  he  is  brought  face  to  face 
with  atonement  for  the  guilty  act,  which 
atonement  he  works  out  in  his  own  peculiar 
way,  which  is  literary.  The  remorseful  ex- 
perience brings  him  to  a  consciousness  of 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBURG.       Ill 

what  he  is  to  do  with  that  pen  of  his  imthe 
new  dawn  of  the  written  word  just  then 
glimmering  around  the  European  horizon 
and  specially  the  German.  Thus  the  tragic 
Goethe  now  appears  in  the  actual  deed  done 
in  the  flesh,  upon  whose  throes  is  deeply 
carved  his  heart's  anguish.  To  be  sure  Goe- 
the's own  personal  tragedy  never  quite 
reached  death's  point;  he  always  succeeded 
in  mediating  it  at  last,  as  he  says,  through 
his  poetry,  which  thus  becomes  for  him  and 
for  his  best  readers  mediatorial — a  kind  of 
vicarious  offering  which  expiates  Transgres- 
sion. Moreover  Goethe  through  his  love  for 
Frederika  became  the  supreme  lyric  poet  of 
modern,  if  not  all  time ;  many  were  the  effu- 
sions spraying  from  his  soul's  depths  into 
the  sunshine  of  that  girl's  countenance;  two 
of  them  may  be  said  to  have  reached  a  height 
which  he  never  afterward  overtopped.  And 
we  are  not  to  forget  that  this  heroine  lived 
among  and  belonged  to  the  people;  a  rustic 
maiden,  or  we  may  call  her  a  folk-girl,  un- 
doubtedly of  finest  type,  whom  the  poet  is  to 
idealize  or  indeed  transfigure  into  an  eternal 
shape  of  beauty.  On  the  other  hand  Frede- 
rika also  must  have  possessed  the  spirit's 
remedial  gift,  as  she,  unmarried,  survived 
her  trial  some  forty-two  years,  dying  in  1813 
at  the  age  of  61.  Upon  her  tombstone  a  stray 


112  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

gleam  of  the  Muse  lias  dropped  down  and 
carved  itself  there  in  lasting  beauty:  "A 
poet's  sun  rayed  forth  its  full  sheen  upon  her 
youth  and  made  it  immortal." 

Significant  is  the  fact  that  the  unexpected 
descent  of  Herder  into  Goethe's  career  quite 
coincides  in  time  with  the  epiphany  of  the 
Alsatian  maiden.  Ever  memorable  was  that 
month  of  October,  1770,  when  two  such  di- 
vine appearances  speeding  down  from  Olym- 
pus of  a  sudden  darted  into  his  life's  jour- 
ney. Do  these  two  striking  phenomena  be- 
long together  in  some  deeper  purpose  or 
stream  of  consciousness?  We  believe  that 
they  do,  as  diverse  as  they  certainly  are  on 
the  surface ;  they  both  lead  the  young  genius 
to  that  poetic  fountain  of  which  he  is  now 
to  take  the  deepest  draughts — the  fountain 
of  the  Teutonic  folk-soul.  To  be  sure  the  two 
conduits  or  channels  tapping  and  conveying 
that  ultimate  fountain  are  in  the  most 
marked  contrast,  but  they  reach  down  to  the 
same  underlying  source  and  terminate  in  the 
same  individual  participant. 

Goethe  in  his  Autobiography  has  wrought 
out  with  great  fullness  the  story  of  his  rela- 
tion to  Frederika.  It  is  one  of  those  novel- 
ettes which  we  have  watched  him  weaving  in- 
to the  historic  events  of  his  life.  But  it  is 
emphatically  the  greatest  of  them  all,  the 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBURG.        113' 

most  complete  in  its  details  *  and  the 
most  finished  in  its  artistic  procedure.  He 
prepares  us  by  suggestion  for  what  is  com- 
ing; at  least  three  times  beforehand  he  hints 
of  his  Frederika,  even  to  the  fateful  outcome 
of  the  story.  That  demonic  kiss  of  the 
French  dancing-master 's  daughter  is  a  kind 
of  prelude  to  the  event  coming  fatefully  on. 
The  rejected  maiden,  as  she  madly  presses 
her  lips  to  his,  utters  the  piercing  outcry  of 
a  Fury:  "Woe  upon  woe,  for  ever  and  ever, 
be  to  that  girl  who  kisses  these  lips  the  first 
time  after  me!  I  know  that  Heaven  hears 
my  curse  this  moment.  And  you,  Sir,  take 
yourself  hence  as  rapidly  as  you  can."  Goe- 
the adds  that  he  flew  down  the  stairs  with  the 
purpose  of  never  entering  that  house  again, 
as  if  forefeeling  the  effect  of  the  woe-freight- 
ed imprecation.  In  his  intimacy  with  Frede- 
rika, his  fear  of  his  curse-laden  kiss  will  dart 
again  and  again  into  his  mind.  Still  he  gives 
it  in  the  hot  fervor  of  passion  and  the  curse 
falls,  like  that  of  Lear,  or  of  Oedepus,  of 
whom  we  are  reminded  by  this  unique  dra- 
matic overture. 

Upon  Frederika 's  first  appearance  before 
him  the  poet  lavishes  all  the  wealth  of  his  de- 
scriptive glories.  He  had  already  entered 
the  Sessenheim  parsonage,  Frederika 's  ab- 
sence was  the  burden  of  the  talk  even  with  a 


GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

touch  of  anxiety,  when  in  she  bounced  and  "a 
most  charming  star  arose  in  this  rural 
Heaven ' ' :  such  are  the  words  of  Goethe  flash- 
ing out  of  his  old-young  eyes.  She  still  "wore 
German/'  that  is,  she  dressed  in  the  national 
costume  of  the  German  country-girl.  "Slen- 
der and  light  she  tripped  along  as  if  she  had 
nothing  to  carry, "  yet  "with  great  blonde 
hair-braids  hanging  down  her  back"  from 
her  neat  hatless  head.  "Out  of  her  cheery 
blue  eyes  she  looked  with  clear  glances  and 
her  pretty  stub-nose  pried  into  the  air  as  un- 
concernedly as  if  there  could  be  no  care  in 
the  world. "  He  says  that  she  stood  between 
the  city  and  the  country,  but  all  his  descrip- 
tion puts  upon  her  the  rural  stamp.  Later 
she  with  mother  and  sister  paid  a  visit  to 
Strassburg,  but  the  lover  confesses  that  she 
did  not  belong  there,  she  was  displaced  from 
her  true  environment  in  the  country  among 
the  people. 

So  Goethe  falls  in  love  with  a  Teutonic 
rural  folk-maiden  of  the  genuine  type  in  com- 
plete accord  with  his  present  temper  and 
spiritual  tendency.  The  inclination  soon  gets 
to  be  a  love  of  the  first  magnitude,  being  the 
third  one  in  his  career  already;  in  fact  the 
artistic  introduction  and  treatment  of  Fred- 
erika  in  his  narration  show  quite  a  resem- 
blance to  his  account  of  Gretchen,  his  first  co- 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBURG.       115 

.4- 

ercive  passion.  Here  it  may  be  stated  that 
Goethe  in  his  Autobiography  makes  uncon- 
sciously a  distinction  'between  his  many  loves 
which  shoot  out  all  over  the  firmament  of  his 
life  like  Heaven's  stars  of  the  first,  second 
and  third  magnitudes,  and  perchance  still 
lesser  ones  which  turn  to  a  kind  of  star-dust 
or  galaxy.  For  instance  that  affair  with  the 
dancing-master's  daughter  was  to  our  Phi- 
leros  but  a  love  of  the  third  magnitude  if  even 
so  large,  whatever  it  may  have  been  to  the 
passionate  girl  with  her  demonic  kiss  of  a 
curse.  Now  his  attachment  to  Frederika 
blazes  up  to  a  love  of  the  first  magnitude,  a 
veritable  Sirius  of  the  stellar  retinue,  and  re- 
ceives proportionate  attention.  To  him  she 
represents  the  Teutonic  folk  with  which  she 
is  ingrown,  and  of  which  she  springs  up  be- 
fore him  the  very  inflorescence  of  love.  We 
must  repeat  that  through  Herder  and  through 
the  Cathedral  he  is  already  in  a  Teutonic 
mood,  and  in  accord  with  his  deepest  nature 
must  love  the  ideal  Teutonic  maid  when  she 
appears. 

But  now  falls  the  counterstroke  after 
months  of  dalliance — that  torturing  sense  of 
guilt  which  he  has  so  often  expressed  directly 
through  open  confession,  and  indirectly 
through  literature.  His  letters  indicate  a 
gnawing  self-reproach;  anxiety  hounds  him 


116  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

on  account  of  his  "  passionate  relation  to 
Frederika;"  from  allusions  somewhat  veiled 
it  is  evident  that  he  has  felt  "the  invisible 
scourge  of  the  Eumenides"  which  "may  lash 
him  out  of  his  country. ' '  Looking  back  from 
his  far  colder  autobiographic  years  of  the 
sixties  he  can  say:  "My  heart  was  torn  by 
the  answer  of  Frederika  to  my  letter  of  sep- 
aration. .  .  -.  Now  I  was  guilty  for  the 
first  time. "  He  recounts  his  former  loves: 
"Gretchen  was  taken  away  from  me;  Kath- 
arina  abandoned  me ;  now  I  was  guilty. ' '  So 
a  penitential  time  sets  in  with  works  of  atone- 
ment. One  queries  with  much  dubitation: 
What  could  the  man  have  done  to  call  up  such 
throes  of  remorse — how  far  did  his  passion 
carry  him?  That  is  not  known  with  exact- 
ness; German  writers  have  differed  much 
tabout  the  degree  of  violation  which  evoked 
such  paroxysms  of  conscience.  At  any  rate 
there  can  be  no  doubt  concerning  his  deep 
and  intense  conviction  of  wrong;  also  no 
doubt  concerning  his  bitter  repentance:  "I 
had  wounded  the  most  beautiful  heart  in  its 
deepest  part,  and  so  there  followed  the  epoch 
of  a  dismal  remorse." 

And  now  for  Goethe's  peculiar  method  of 
self -recovery,  of  winning  a  certain  relief  and 
forgiveness  from  his  conscience.  He  is  to 
appeal  to  that  deepest  mediatorial  principle 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBUJiG.       117 

of  his  nature:  poetry.  Says  he:  "At  the 
time  when  the  pain  at  Frederika's  situation 
tortured  me,  I  sought  help  in  my  old  way, 
through  poetic  composition.  I  continued 
again  to  practise  my  accustomed  poetic  con- 
fession in  order  to  become  worthy  of  an  in- 
ner absolution  through  this  self-tormenting 
penitence.  The  two  Marias  in  Gotz  and  Cla- 
vigo  can  properly  be  regarded  as  results  of 
such  penitential  contemplations,  also  the  two 
miserable  fellows  who  play  the  parts  of  lov- 
ers in  those  dramas. "  Thus  Goethe  pun- 
ished himself  through  his  pen,  and  sought  to 
reward  his  female  victims  in  the  same  way — 
which  atonement  they  probably  did  not  care 
for  or  even  know  about.  However  we  catch 
here  the  spur  which  harassed  him  into  pro- 
duction— the  necessity  of  self-redemption 
from  guilt.  Still  the  purgatorial  process  was 
not  easy  or  short ;  it  kept  recurring  with  new 
resurgences  of  remorse  and  goading  him  to 
still  further  poetic  utterance.  Margaret  in 
Faust  is  largely  a  confession  of  scenes  with 
Frederika.  In  his  Stella  is  a  direct  outburst : 
"Retributive  Fate,  thou  dost  lie  heavy  upon 
me,  and  art  just — 0,  pardon  me — it  is  long 
—I  have  gone  through  an  infinite  suffering. ' ' 
And  still  the  inner  absolution  would  not  come 
in  spite  of  these  paroxysmal  offerings  of 
sighs  and  even  tears.  Some  eight  years  later 


118  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

in  his  journey  to  Switzerland  he  felt  com- 
pelled to  make  a  diversion  to  Sessenheim  and 
there  in  the  family  itself  to  seek  some  kind  of 
forgiveness.  He  describes  the  fact  in  a  let- 
ter of  the  time :  he  saw  Frederika  * '  who  once 
loved  me  more  beautifully  than  I  deserved. 
I  had  to  leave  her  at  a  moment  when  it  cost 
her  almost  her  life.  I  stayed  over  night  and 
set  out  the  next  morning  at  sunrise  sur- 
rounded by  the  friendly  faces  of  the  family, 
so  that  I  can  again  think  on  this  little  corner 
of  the  world  with  peace  of  mind  and  can  live 
placated  in  myself  with  these  reconciled 
spirits. "  So  he,  self -accused,  makes  a  pilgrim- 
age to  the  scene  of  his  wrong  for  atonement, 
and  comes  away  with  some  feeling  of  forgiv- 
eness. That  seems  to  be  the  last  flicker  of 
Goethe's  novel  lived  by  himself  and  Fred- 
erika. 

Here,  then,  we  win  a  glimpse  of  Goethe's 
deepest  impulse  to  the  written  word:  his  re- 
demption from  guilt.  He  goes  through  the 
round  of  humanity  in  himself :  transgression, 
reproach,  penance,  and  forgiveness.  It  is 
what  the  church  essentially  prescribed  for  the 
sinful  soul:  heart's  sorrow  (contritio  cordis), 
oral  confession  (confessio  oris),  reparation 
through  the  deed  (satisfactio  operis).  But 
the  mediation  of  church  and  priest  has  now 
become  internal ;  man,  still  prone  to  sin,  is  to 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  8TRASSBURG.       119 

complete  the  process  of  atonement  within  his 
own  conscience.  Moreover  this  man  is  now 
the  poet,  the  creator  of  the  word  supreme 
which  he  will  utter  to  his  fellow  men  as  his 
message.  Thus  it  becomes  a  kind  of  new 
evangel  to  erring  humanity,  who  by  help  of 
this  fresh  utterance  are  to  win  their  self-re- 
demption. Such  is  the  deepest  significance 
of  Goethe  in  his  writ  and  in  his  life,  for  his 
life  is  a  mightier  poem  than  any  or  all  of  his 
written  things  put  together.  It  is  the  total 
man  in  his  complete  rou*nd  of  error,  sin,  dam- 
nation, hell,  repentance  and  restoration- 
life's  purgatorial  journey  which  the  poet 
travels  and  then  narrates  for  the  rest  of  us 
sinners.  Thus  he  suffers  for,  all  and  sings 
his  suffering — in  his  way  a  vicarious  sacri- 
fice. 

And  now  comes  up  the  question  which  was 
asked  the  moment  Goethe's  Autobiography 
appeared,  has  been  asked  ever  since,  and  will 
continue  to  be  asked  by  a  multitude  of  read- 
ers as  long  as  the  book  is  read :  Why  did  not 
Wolfgang  Goethe  marry  Frederika  Brion? 
He  was  well  aware  of  the  question  and  of  his 
condemnation,  for  he  lived  many  years  after 
the  publication  of  this  novelette.  Several 
times  he  seems  in  conversation  to  throw  out 
excuses,  probably  without  believing  much  in 
them  himself.  At  any  rate  he  was  caught  in 


120  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

double  grip  of  Fate  and  whichever  way  he 
went,  guilt  certainly  and  possibly  tragedy 
stared  him  in  the  the  face.  Especially  he  was 
disillusioned  when  he  saw  the  country  girl 
outside  of  her  poetic  rural  environment  on 
her  visit  to  Strassburg.  He  came  to  the  con- 
viction that  under  the  circumstances  mar- 
riage meant  only  a  longer  and  a  worse  trag- 
edy for  both.  But  in  the  mad  intoxication  of 
love  he  had  plunged  forward  to  a  point  from 
which  he  could  not  retreat  without  inflicting 
pain  and  wrong.  So*  he  was  caught  in  the 
awful  criss-cross  of  guilt  whatever  he  might 
do.  Not  only  outer  censure  will  be  his,  but 
also  the  inner  laceration  of  conscience  by  go- 
ing either  way.  So  he  portrays  that  mill  of 
destiny  into  which  his  emotions  have  hurried 
him,  as  it  literally  grinds  him  for  years  in  the 
torture.  He  has  set  forth  this  stage  of  guilt 
in  Meister,  where  the  old  Harper  sings  of  the 
Heavenly  Powers : 

Ihr  fiihrt  ins  Leben  uns  hinein, 
Ihr  lasst  den  Armen  schuldig  werden, 
Dann  iiberlasst  ihr  ihn  der  Pein 
Denn  alle  Schuld  racht  sich  auf  Erden. 

This  experience  made  him  the  poet.  The 
mighty  collision  of  human  life  went  inside 
him  and  tore  him  to  pieces.  He  was  both 
sides  of  the  tragic  conflict,  and  whichever 


AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  STRASSBU^RG.        121 

side  received  the  blow  lie  was  the  sufferer. 
Still  he  had  to  act  and  take  guilt  with  its  re- 
morse and  penalty. 

VI.  At  the  end  here  we  must  take  a  brief 
look  at  the  University,  though  it  and  its  Pro- 
fessors meant  quite  nothing  to  the  student 
Goethe.  But  to  satisfy  his  father  he  did 
learn  enough  law,  not  to  get  the  full  degree 
of  doctor,  but  to  become  a  licentiate.  Curi- 
ous is  the  subject  he  took  for  his  dissertation : 
The  State  is  to  establish  Religion  by  law,  but 
is  not  to  interfere  with  private  opinion.  So 
he  set  up  a  kind  of  tyrant;  the  law  is  made 
and  interpreted  by  the  Prince  or  Ruler,  the 
people  having  nothing  to  do  with  it.  The 
people  as  self -legislative  lay  beyond  his  hori- 
zon; but  he  reached  down  to  them  in  speech, 
song,  mythus.  The  tyranny  of  the  Three 
Unities  in  the  drama  he  assailed,  but  not  tyr- 
anny in  politics.  Goethe  was  a  tyrant  polit- 
ically at  Weimar ;  the  Duke  called  him  by  that 
name,  and  had  occasion  more  than  once  to 
assert  his  own  autocracy  against  the  auto- 
crat. 

Thus  he  brings  to  a  close  his  studies  at 
Strassburg,  which  belonged  chiefly  to  the 
great  University  outside  of  the  University. 
Much  had  he  gotten  very  needful  for  his  life 's 
curriculum;  but  his  prophetic  instinct  was 
bent  to  find  and  to  appropriate  what  was  to 


122  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

enter  into  his  future.  The  transmitted  train- 
ing had  to  be  transcended  by  the  genius,  and 
Goethe 's  prescriptive  education  was  simply 
set  aside  at  Strassburg  except  in  the  one 
small  point  of  the  law.  The  Cathedral,  Her- 
der, and  Frederika  had  been  his  real  Univer- 
sity. On  the  whole  his  career  at  Strassburg 
meant  a  breach  with  the  traditional  order,  and 
this  character  he  will  soon  embody  in  his 
Gotz,  when  his  pen  begins  to  flow  into  new- 
born shapes  at  Frankfort. 

When  Goethe  entered  his  native  city  in 
August,  1771,  he  felt  himself  a  new  man  with 
a  new  vocation  of  his  own  choice,  which  he  at 
once  set  about  to  realize.  Hence  it  comes 
that  a  fresh  Epoch  begins  with  him,  in  its 
salient  features  the  most  sharply  marked  and 
distinctive  of  his  whole  career.  This  is  what 
we  are  next  to  consider. 


THE  FRANKFORT  QUADRENNI^M.          123 


CHAPTER  SECOND. 

THE  FRANKFORT  QUADRENNIUM. 

So  we  shall  name  the  next  four  years  of 
Goethe's  productive  life,  affixing  this  title  as 
a  sort  of  temporal  tag,  to  which  we  shall 
often  hereafter  have  occasion  to  refer.  For 
now  Goethe  the  author  breaks  out  with  a 
kind  of  cosmic  fury,  world-making,  and  starts 
the  mighty  creations  which  it  will  take  him  a 
life-time  to  finish,  and  some  he  never  gets 
done. 

Volcanic  is  the  term  most  frequently  ap- 
plied to  the  present  grand  upheaval  of  the 
poet  which  seems  so  sudden  and  overwhelm- 
ing, as  if  giving  vent  to  all  the  pent-up  forces 
of  Nature.  Then  follows  an  equally  sudden 
and  surprising  quiescence,  so  that  the  human 
volcano  appears  almost  extinct  for  some 
years  after  its  prolific  quadrennial  overflow 
at  Frankfort.  Thus  it  comes  that  the  pres- 
ent time  is  very  distinctly  bounded  in  Goe- 
the's career;  in  fact  it  bounds  itself  as  de- 
cisively as  does  the  mountain  which  uplifts 
itself  abruptly  skyward  out  of  the  plain  be- 
low. It  is  the  young  volcanic  Goethe  now 
passing  through  his  primordial  state  of  erup- 


124  GOETHE'S  LIFE -POEM. —PART  FIRST. 

tion,  as  if  he  had  to  live  over  in  his  own  soul 
the  elemental  stages  of  Nature's  evolution. 
So  we  may  be  allowed  to  think  of  some  deep 
ultimate  sympathy  which  bonded  the  poet's 
life  with  that  of  his  planet  or  perchance  of 
the  cosmos.  The  thread  of  Natural  Science 
which  spins  through  his  activity  till  the  close 
of  his  days  may  go  back  and  connect  with  his 
volcanic  time. 

In  such  fashion  we  shall  let  Goethe's  sec- 
ond Epoch  at  the  start  define  itself,  for  it 
still  is  a  part  or  stage  of  his  Pre-Italian  Pe- 
riod, and  thus  may  be  deemed  in  the  total 
view  a  preparatory  discipline  for  his  larger 
life-work.  He  has  to  go  through  the  present 
unclassic  schooling  before  he  can  appreciate 
aright  classic  Italy.  He  has  to  realize  first 
his  own  Northern  Teutonic  spirit  ere  he  can 
unite  it  with  the  antique  culture  in  a  creative 
way.  So  we  can  glimpse  at  the  start  this 
Frankfort  Quadrennium  as  a  single  epochal 
turn  in  Goethe's  total  evolution. 

It  is  also  designated  often  as  Titanic,  be- 
ing supremely  defiant  of  the  existent  order, 
and  hostile  to  the  old  established  Gods.  One 
of  these  ancient  Titans  he  will  seek  to  limn 
early  in  his  career,  his  Prometheus,  whom, 
however,  he  could  never  quite  conquer  in 
writ. 

Another  designation  of  the  present  Epoch 


THE  FRANKFORT  QUADRENNIUM.     125 

*•• 

emphasizes  its  contrast  with  the  preceding 
Epoch  by  terming  it  anti-prescriptive,  run- 
ning counter  to  the  realm  of  prescription, 
which  has  hitherto  dominated  the. poet's  life 
even  if  often  under  protest.  It  is  thus  a 
mighty  revolt  of  the  individual  against  his 
environing  institutional  order,  whose  valid- 
ity he  has  to  learn  by  colliding  with  it,  and 
then  portraying  his  collision,  which  thereby 
takes  its  place  as  a  phase  of  Universal  Lit- 
erature. 

His  creative  energy  at  this  time,  or  his 
writing  demon,  as  we  may  call  it,  is  unique 
in  his  own  life  for  its  enormous  output  both 
as  to  quantity  and  character,  and  would  be 
hard  to  parallel  in  any  other  great  writer. 
He  rises  up  a  kind  of  Super-man  in  a  new  lit- 
erary movement,  and  his  Genius  seems  to  be 
endowed  with  an  elemental  energy  in  its  ut- 
terance, often  turbid  and  uproarous,  yet  al- 
ways strong  and  daring  even  in  its  defects. 

Equaly  energetic  and  overflowing  is  the 
part  of  Phileros  during  this  Epoch.  Goethe 
as  champion  lover  of  the  time  if  not  of  all 
time,  shows  his  greatest  activity  of  love  at 
present ;  it  too  is  volcanic  both  as  to  intensity 
and  power,  and  appears  in  a  perpetual  state 
of  eruption.  Here  too  we  note  that  strange 
connection  between  his  productive  and  his 
amatory  energy;  the  two  are  counterparts 


126  GOETHE'S  LTFE-POEM.—PART  FIRST. 

and  rise  together  from  the  deepest  thrill  of 
his  being. 

So  much  in  general  terms  as  a  forecast  of 
the  present  Epoch. 

I.  Quitting  his  Strassburg  time  of  disci- 
pline, young  Goethe  returns  to  the  paternal 
roof  in  Frankfort,  charged  to  the  muzzle  with 
all  the  spiritual  explosives  of  the  age  as  the 
material  for  his  Genius.  Four  years  the  vol- 
canic outpour  will  last  (1771-1775),  with  a 
creative  potence  which  would  not  be  easy  to 
find  in  Literature.  Taking  the  Greek  sym- 
bol for  such  a  character  we  have  called  him 
the  Titan,  who  warred  in  the  twilight  of  time 
with  the  deities  of  the  Upper  World,  defying 
the  established  Olympian  order.  Such  colos- 
sal characters,  corresponding  with  his  pres- 
ent mood,  Goethe  will  pick  out  of  the  myth- 
ical and  historical  past,  and  seek  to  mould 
them  anew  in  human  speech  during  this  the 
mightiest,  most  exuberant  overflow  of  cre- 
ativity of  all  his  life's  Epochs.  Never  again 
will  he  have  such  an  unremitting  spell  of  lit- 
erary genesis,  which  indeed  begets  the  chief 
works  of  his  later  years,  and  starts  their  evo- 
lution which,  in  the  case  of  Faust,  runs 
through  all  his  days  and  joins  them  together 
in  its  unity.  Moreover  he  will  make  himself 
the  center  of  a  band  of  like-minded  writers 
and  readers,  who  constitute  the  movement 


THE  FRANKFORT  QUADRENNIVM.     127 

.$• 

known  in  German  literary  history  as  Sturm 
und  Drang  (Storm  and  Stress),  which  ex- 
pression images  its  activity. 

It  was  a  struggle  welling  up  from  tho 
deepest  human  sources,  an  uplift  which  we 
may  name  elemental.  We  can  observe  it  as 
a  stage  in  the  development  of  all  the  great 
poets.  It  is  an  original  force,  like  a  force  of 
Nature  which  takes  possession  of  the  man, 
turning  him  for  a  while  into  an  element  of 
Nature  which  acts  beyond  his  will.  He  be- 
comes as  the  volcano,  the  storm,  the  mighty 
onflow  of  the  river.  Shakespeare,  when  in 
full  demonic  obsession,  shows  this  elemental 
energy  at  its  height  in  the  thunder  of  his 
words,  for  instance  in  his  youthful  Richard 
III  and  in  the  King  Lear  of  his  middle  age. 
The  Titan  expresses  the  concentrated  might 
of  all  individuality,  as  restrained  by  the  lim- 
ited, the  established,  the  institutional.  The 
world  becomes  too  small  for  the  aspiring 
spirit  who  will  shatter  it  to  fragments. 

Language  likewise  must  reflect  this  break- 
ing over  transmitted  limits.  Goethe's  early 
speech  often  defies  the  grammatical  organ- 
ism, it  too  is  explosive  in  word,  sentence, 
paragraph,  as  well  as  in  theme.  What  a 
maelstrom  of  apostrophes,  exclamations, 
breaks  in  structure,  sudden  saltations  of 
meaning  out  of  ken!  Note  this  chaotic  and 


128  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

often  coruscating  prose  till  it  smoothes  down 
into  the  classic  flow  of  Meister,  deep  but 
transparent.  Here  again  we  feel  that  Goethe 
is  tapping  the  far-down  elemental  sources  of 
human  utterance  as  it  first  springs  from  the 
Teutonic  folk-soul.  Herder  had  stimulated 
him  to  this  strain  at  Strassburg,  and  he  had 
taken  his  first  lesson  by  collecting  the  Alsa- 
tian ballads  of  the  people.  Language  also 
had  become  crystallized  in  that  time  of  the 
spirit's  crystallization,  and  must  be  shiv- 
ered into  its  original  atoms,  for  a  great  lin- 
guistic re-birth.  Thus  the  Titanic  revolu- 
tion reached  down  to  the  prime  vehicle  of  all 
literary  expression,  which  like  everything  ex- 
ternally transmitted  and  imposed  from  the 
outside  must  be  knocked  to  pieces,  and  if  pos- 
sible, reconstructed. 

Thus  then  streams  through  this  entire 
epoch  an  unearthly  striving  to  get  beyond 
and  beyond  out  of  this  little  earthly  exist- 
ence; limit-breaking  the  man  pushes  for  the 
unlimited,  for  that  which  he  deems  his  free 
dom.  In  his  thought  and  imagery  there  is 
often  a  cosmical  outreach ;  in  this  sentence 
of  Gotz  we  may  hear  the  note  of  the  new  liter- 
ary Superman:  "To  me  it  was  as  if  I  held 
the  sun  in  my  hand  and  could  play  ball  with 
it!"  Not  only  supra-terrestrial  but  supra- 
solar  rises  the  daring  conception,  whose  play- 


THE  FRANKFORT  QUADRENNIUM.     129 

,4- 

ground  is  the  cosmos — a  far  larger  field  than 
those  old  giants  had  who  could  only  pile  Ossa 
on  Pelion. 

Many  productions  written  in  this  spirit 
rose  roaring  and  surging  along  the  surface 
of  the  time's  turbid  current,  but  they  have 
vanished  into  the  ocean  of  inanity  except 
those  of  Goethe.  And  some  of  his  survive 
not  of  their  own  worth,  but  buoyed  up  by  the 
fame  of  his  Muse,  they  float  along  in  the  up- 
bearing current  of  his  greatest  works. 

II.  There  were  many  signs  throughout 
Europe  of  the  mighty  protest  against  the  old 
outgrown  social  order.  The  French  Revolu- 
tion was  brewing  at  the  time,  and  the  ferment 
was  not  confined  to  France.  Voltaire's  bit- 
ter negations  had  traversed  and  leavened 
the  whole  field  of  European  culture.  Then 
came  Rousseau  whose  cry  "Back  to  Nature" 
became  the  text  of  the  time  and  of  Goethe. 
The  entire  institutional  world  was  regarded 
as  unnatural,  artificial,  fit  only  for  the  gen- 
eral bonfire  soon  to  be  kindled.  French  lit- 
erature, then  the  mouthpiece  of  the  spirit  of 
the  age,  was  peppered  through  and  through 
with  the  eternal  No,  denying  especially  the 
transmitted  system  in  society,  state,  relig- 
ion, education.  The  Last  Judgment  on  the 
old  forms  of  man's  associated  life  was  al- 
ready being  trumpeted  from  every  part  of 


130  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

Europe's  sky,  and  it  was  forefelt  everywhere 
that  the  universal  doom  would  soon  go  into 
execution.  Already  during  these  very  years 
on  another  continent  the  great  new  Kevoln- 
tion  was  starting.  The  American  War  of  In- 
dependence has  its  parallel  with  Goethe's 
War  of  Independence  which  he  fought  out  in 
writ  during  his  present  Titanic  Quadren- 
nium.  Very  remote  were  the  two  -movements 
and  quite  unaware  of  each  other,  still  they 
were  both  elemental  expressions,  or  if  you 
please,  explosions  of  the  same  central  spir- 
itual energy  of  the  time  rounding  the  whole 
earth. 

So  this  brief  bit  of  Goethe's  life  has  a  far- 
reaching  significance.  It  is  not  too  much  to 
say  that  here  the  poet  becomes  the  main  lit- 
erary spokesman  of  the  turn  of  an  epoch ;  he 
is  the  voice  of  a  node  of  the  World 's  History. 
Today  there  does  not  exist  probably  a  more 
characteristic  and  smiting  utterance  of  that 
age  than  Goethe 's  manifold,  but  fragmentary 
outbursts  during  these  four  years.  His  words 
seem  now  the  fore-words  of  the  grand  com- 
ing deed,  the  French  Eevolution.  Never 
again,  even  if  he  wrote  afterwards  more  per- 
fect works  artistically,  was  he  so  adequately 
the  herald  of  his  time,  delivering  its  message 
from  the  supernal  Powers- in  a  speech  well 
accordant  with  its  character.  Onlv  in  his 


THE  FRANKFORT  QUADRENNIQM.  131 

Faust,  which  has  its  conception  and  earliest 
form  in  this  Quadrennium,  did  he  so  deeply 
touch  the  creative  fountains  of  our  modern 
spirit. 

Let  it  be  said,  however,  that  Goethe's  pro- 
ductions of  this  stage  are  stamped  so  pe- 
culiarly with  the  monstrous  mood  of  the 
epoch  and  with  his  own  anarchic  condition, 
that  they  seem  unbalanced  to  many  people 
and  hard  to  read.  They  certainly  do  lack 
the  calm  clear  universality  to  which  he  as 
author  evolved  in  many  of  his  later  writings. 
He  is  not  in  the  present  output  a  model  in 
any  wise,  be  it  of  style,  .thought,  or  man.  Still 
just  in  this  lies  a  chief  interest  of  .his  biog- 
raphy; he  had  the  power  of  unfolding  out  of 
this  primal  chaotic  earthquake  of  his  age  and 
of  himself  into  an  Olympian  serenity  of  soul, 
speech  and  writ.  And  right  here  it  should  be 
emphasized  that  Goethe  passed  through  more 
stages,  and  more  pivotal  stages,  of  human 
consciousness  than  any  other  known  man, 
and  at  the  same  time  preserved  the  genius  to 
fling  them  out  of  himself  into  vivid  and  sym- 
pathetic utterance.  In  this  connection  again 
we  may  repeat  that  the  main  object  of  the 
present  book  is  to  find  and  set  forth  the  har- 
monious psychical  order  of  these  multifari- 
ous stages  of  the  poet  tumbling  through  one 
another  backward  and  forward  on  the  sur- 


132  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

face,  but  manifesting  an  inner  movement  and 
law  of  their  own. 

III.  On  Goethe 's  return  from  Strassburg 
to  Frankfort,  the  first  thing  to  be  noticed  in 
reference  to  the  youthful  protester  is  that  he 
finds  himself  in  fierce  rebellion  with  his  whole 
environment.  In  the  paternal  home  he  was 
again  subject  to  the  narrow  pedantry  of  his 
father,  just  the  opposite  of  himself  who  was 
seeking  to  break  loose  from  the  fetters  of  the 
past.  The  strict  old  gentleman  gave  to  the 
wayward  son  very  sparingly  of  his  cash,  re- 
ducing the  youth's  free  life  to  painful  limits; 
for  we  may  suppose  that  the  young  stormer 
was  as  prodigal  of  money  as  of  genius.  Thus 
his  native  town  of  Frankfort  he  grew  to 
loathe  for  its  petty  social  life,  and  its  devo- 
tion to  mere  money-getting.  He  would  flee 
to  his  attic  for  a  free  outlook  with  the  Muses, 
or  would  rush  through  the  city-gates  for  a 
carousal  with  boundless  Nature.  Above  all 
he  detested  his  vocation,  that  of  attorney,  and 
his  first  law-suit  seems  to  have  given  him  a 
disgusting  dose  of  shysterdom.  No  wonder 
that  he  afterwards  so  often  dwells  on  the 
wretched  lot  of  the  man  whose  strongest  na- 
tural bent  runs  counter  to  his  calling,  to  the 
work  he  has  to  do  every  day. 

It  seems  too  that  he  met  at  this  time  a 
literary  personage,  who  was  full  of  the  de- 


THE  FRANKFORT  QUADRENNIUM.     133 

.*• 

nying  spirit  of  the  age,  and  who,  he  says, 
' l  had  the  greatest  influence  on  my  life. ' '  This 
companion  "had  embittered  himself  against 
the  whole  world,  and  had  allowed  this  mor- 
bid whim  to  sway  him  to  such  a  degree  that 
he  felt  an  irresistible  inclination  to  be  wil- 
fully a  roguish  clown  (8 chalk)  or  even  a 
downright  scamp  (Schelm)"  (See  Autobiog- 
raphy Book  12).  The  name  of  this  character 
was  Merck,  who  evidently  contributed  a  num- 
ber of  features  and  probably  of  sayings  to 
the  portraiture  of  Mephistopheles ;  indeed 
Goethe  names  him  Mephistopheles  Merck. 
But  the  deeper  matter  is  that  the  poet  beheld 
in  this  real  demonic  figure  a  very  significant 
phase  of  himself  at  the  present  epoch,  a  liv- 
ing counterpart  and  spokesman  of  his  own 
negative  condition.  Hence  a  strong  affinity 
sprang  up  at  once  between  the  two  universal 
soreheads,  till  Goethe  sucked  the  egg  dry, 
which  was  addle  indeed,  though  sweet  to  his 
devilish  taste  just  now.  The  later  outcome 
of  Merck  must  be  noted :  he  committed  sui- 
cide, the  negation  negated  itself  with  due 
logic,  and  a  sorrowful  time  of  it  the  poor  fel- 
low had  in  the  real  tragedy  which  he  got  out 
of  life.  A  strange  immortality  he  has  won 
by  revealing  the  Devil  of  Culture  in  person 
to  the  creator  of  Mephistopheles.  It  is  true 
that  some  modern  commentators  have  warmlv 


134  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

defended  the  character  of  Merck  against 
Goethe  who  is  charged  with  injustice  and 
even  ingratitude  against  the  man  who  had 
befriended  him.  We  are  inclined  to  think  that 
some  truth  lurks  in  this  defence.  Still  hero 
we  are  to  see  what  Merck  meant  to  Goethe, 
at  a  very  important  turn  in  the  latter 's  spir- 
itual evolution. 

It  becomes  evident  that  Goethe  during  this 
Frankfort  Quadrennium  had  unfolded  into  a 
full-fledged  institutional  rebel,  as  we  may 
generalize  him  for  the  nonce.  He  was  out 
with  his  family,  especially  with  the  head 
thereof,  his  father ;  he  hated  his  stifling  com- 
munity ;  he  had  little  respect  for  the  supreme 
State  above  him,  the  Holy  Koman  Empire 
with  its  justice;  of  Eeligion  as  established 
he  was  defiant,  though  he  might  indulge  in  a 
subjective  play  of  it  with  Fraulein  Von  Klet- 
tenberg  who  passed  away  toward  the  end 
of  this  Frankfort  epoch  (in  1774).  A  mighty 
inner  defiance  to  the  whole  transmitted  world 
of  institutions  was  his  attitude,  to  which  has 
been  given  the  name  Titanic,  and  which  was 
soon  to  burst  forth  through  him  into  its  colos- 
sal literary  expression.  Though  his  reaction 
was  born  of  a  petty  locality,  and  his  spirit's 
protest  sprang  from  his  shriveled  communal 
environment,  his  genius  made  it  universal, 
flung  it  by  his  poetic  might  through  Space 


THE  FRANKFORT  QUADRENNIUM.     135 

and  down  Time  so  that  we  read  it  ,today  on 
the  other  side  of  the  world  as  typical  of  a 
similar  condition  in  ourselves  and  in  our 
land  and  age.  In  fact  it  were  not  hard  to 
point  out  contemporary  writers  who  repre- 
sent this  stage. 

IV.  And  now  we  must  take  note  of  the 
other  thread,  passionate,  deeply  internal, 
which  winds  through  Goethe's  life,  and  is  es- 
pecially to  be  designated  in  the  present  Quad- 
rennium.  His  love  we  are  not  to  leave  out, 
or  rather  his  loves,  for  with  him  this  emotion 
had  the  tendency  to  break  over  the  singular 
into  the  plural  number.  Titanic,  barrier- 
bursting,  soul-dizzying  was  his  experience  in 
this  field.  Two  if  not  three  stars  of  the  first 
magnitude  rose  in  his  Frankfort  heaven ;  then 
other  stars  of  the  second  magnitude  flash  out 
fitfully,  and  even  of  stars  of  the  third  we 
catch  some  dim  uncertain  twinkles.  Again 
we  behold  Goethe  the  lover  as  the  profound- 
est  and  most  abiding  strain  of  his  total  per- 
sonality ;  lover  he  is,  unconfined,  volcanic  here 
too,  indeed  the  lover  of  Love,  Phileros,  we 
have  named  Mm  in  this  part  of  his  life's 
drama,  which  part  streams,  hot  through  all 
his  utterances  both  in  word  and  deed  unto 
the  very  last. 

Yet  to  this  sweet  dalliance"  with  tender 
hearts  Goethe  will  not  fail  to  show  in  keen 


136  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

requital  the  counter  thrust:  guilt,  self-re- 
proach, penitential  sorrow.  Again  he  will 
employ  his  literary  method  of  confession: 
not  by  the  secret  word  whispered  in  the 
ear  of  the  priest,  but  by  the  open  writ  pro- 
claiming in  the  face  of  the  whole  world  the 
transgression  and  its  punishment.  Litera- 
ture he  turns  into  his  confessional,  whereby 
he  unloads  his  sense  of  guilt,  at  least  for  a 
time.  He  writes  during  this  Quadrennium 
three  dramas  in  which  he  lays  upon  three 
faithless  lovers  the  decree  of  death,  making 
them  tragic ;  he  slays  himself  thrice  upon  the 
stage  for  his  own  deed  done  to  Frederika. 
Thus  he  in  his  way  puts  himself  into  his  self- 
made  Inferno,  branded  with  his  sin,  as  an  ex- 
piation due  to  his  own  conscience.  After  a 
not  dissimilar  manner  Dante  sent  himself 
down  to  his  special  circle  of  Hell,  and  recog- 
nized himself  in  the  victim  of  his  damnation, 
though  under  a  different  name. 

As  already  remarked  these  four  years  were 
the  most  original  in  production,  the  most 
germinal  of  his  whole  literary  career,  as  well 
as  the  fullest.  The  time  was  a  delirium  of 
creation  whose  mighty  push  was  to  "widen 
out  this  narrow  existence  to  eternity. "  It 
was  a  debauch  of  his  spirit's  freedom :  "More 
than  ever  I  was  turned  to  the  open  world,  to- 
wards boundless  nature,"  away  from  the  in- 


GOTZ  VON  BERLICHINGEN.  137 

stituted  world  of  man.  And  the  paroxysm 
went  on  without  cease,  as  he  states  in  his  Au- 
tobiography: "My  productive  talent  never 
quit  me  a  moment  for  some  years, "  even 
active  during  the  night,  and  turning  the  day's 
experiences  into  dreams;  "let  there  be  only 
an  occasion  with  some  character  in  it,  and  I 
was  ready "  with  my  poem  or  novel,  not  omit- 
ting farces  and  satires,  and  lyrical  outbursts. 
Such  was  his  overflowing  Vesuvius. 

Of  the  chief  productions  of  this  epoch  we 
may  give  a  brief  account,  noting  their  great 
variety  yet  their  common  character, 


I 

Gotz  Von  Berlichingen. 

Such  is  the  name  of  Goethe's  first  charac- 
teristic production,  dramatic  in  form,  but  de- 
fying dramatic  form  with  a  furious  explos- 
iveness.  It  has  perchance  a  center  from 
which  it  shoots  forth  in  diverse  directions, 
but  hardly  has  a  dramatic  unity,  against 
which  it  vehemently  asserts  its  freedom. 
The  transmitted  law  of  the  drama  the  Titan 
must  deny  and  break  to  fragments  just  in 
writing  his  drama,  else  he  were  no  literary 
Titan.  Hence  the  chief  interest  of  the  pres- 


138  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

ent  piece  is  to  see  how  its  very  form  becomes 
formless,  and  how  it  illustrates  both  the 
character  of  the  time  and  of  the  author.  It 
is  the  sudden  explosive  detonating  prelude 
which  announces  the  advent  of  the  poet  Goe- 
the. Scarcely  had  he  touched  the  soil  of 
Frankfort  when  the  subject  began  to  simmer, 
and  such  was  his  frenzy  of  composition  that 
in  about  six  weeks  the  whole  work  was  writ- 
ten or  rather  erupted  from  his  volcanic  Self. 

Significant  is  the  fact  that  Goethe  was 
never  quite  satisfied  with  the  chaotic  audaci- 
ties of  his  first  famous  masterpiece.  Again 
and  again  he  tried  to  mend  it  and  to  put  in 
theatrical  bounds,  making  it  suitable  for  the 
Weimar  stage;  in  the  main  without  success. 
If  he  had  succeeded,  he  would  have  destroyed 
his  work,  for  its  essence  is  to  be  a  shred  of 
chaos,  not  of  cosmos.  No;  it  would  not  let 
itself  be  tampered  with,  even  by  its  own 
maker.  So  it  must  stand  with  all  its  rugged 
fervor  as  a  mountain  uprisen  in  a  night  to 
mark  the  distinctive  starting-point  of  Goe- 
the's total  life-poem. 

The  literary  overture,  then,  to  this  Frank- 
fort Quadrennium  or  Epoch,  and  in  fact  to 
Goethe's  career  in  its  entire  sweep,  is  Gotz 
Von  Berlicliingen,  a  drama  with  an  historical 
setting  which  goes  back  to  the  Germany  of 
the  16th  century,  but  is  intended  to  cast  an 


.*• 

GOTZ  VON  BERLICHINGEN.  139 

image  of  Germany  of  the  18th  century,  of  the 
poet's  own  time.  Scarcely  had  he  settled 
down  at  Frankfort  in  1771,  when  he  dashed 
off  with  amazing  rapidity  his  first  form  of 
Gotz;  the  next  year  (1772)  he  recast  the 
whole,  so  that  in  1773  it  was  published  in  its 
present  shape.  Noteworthy  is  the  incident 
already  mentioned  that  Goethe  often  after- 
ward tried  to  finish  the  unfinishable,  and  kept 
tinkering  at  it  almost  to  the  end  of  his  days. 
Strains  of  this  preluding  work  of  his  we 
shall  often  catch  hereafter. 

Gotz  is  the  heroic  noble  who,  having  fallen 
out  with  the  stagnant  environing  Teutonic 
world,  starts  to  defy  it  and  to  assail  it  in  its 
leading  manifestations.  Thus  he  collides 
with  supreme  authority,  that  of  the  Kaiser, 
Maximilian  I,  and  was  laid  under  the  imperial 
ban,  besieged  in  his  castle,  but  was  rescued 
by  an  associate,  and  pardoned.  But  again 
he  repeats  his  violation  of  the  existent  order, 
arid  perishes.  In  one  way  or  other  through 
the  course  of  the  drama  Gotz  is  brought  into 
conflict  with  the  established  institutions  of 
the  age — nobility,  city,  church,  state.  This 
was  the  daring  Titanic  element  in  him  which 
appealed  at  that  time  so  strongly  to  Goethe. 
Still  the  poet  realizes  that  such  a  character 
in  the  end  is  tragic. 

Suggestive  is  the  fact  that  Goethe  does  not 


140  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

introduce  into  this  drama  of  protest  the 
mightiest  protest  of  the  age,  that  of  Protest- 
antism itself.  In  general  Gotz  was  coteni- 
porary  with  Luther.  But  the  epoch-turning 
Teutonic  attack  upon  the  Latin  Church  is 
shunned  by  the  Teutonic  poet  in  his  most 
Teutonic  mood  and  production.  It  is  true 
that  ecclesiastics  are  introduced — a  bishop 
with  his  court,  an  abbot  with  attendants; 
there  then  is  the  humble  monk  Martin  whose 
name  recalls  Luther,  and  who  in  a  single 
scene  of  the  First  Act  speaks  words  of  deep 
sympathy  with  Gotz,  and  then  drops  out  of 
the  drama  completely.  One  thinks  that  Goe- 
the may  have  intended  to  make  further  use 
of  this  rather  mysterious  monk,  but  found 
that  he  could  not  without  danger  to  his 
drama.  So  the  conflict  of  Gotz  is  limited  to 
the  secular  institutions  of  the  period,  which 
are  also  in  the  condition  of  dry  rot,  and  sorely 
need  the  reformer. 

Now  the  poet  interweaves  the  second  chief 
strand  of  the  play,  taking  a  theme  which  was 
much  nearer  liis  heart  than  State  or  Church, 
namely  love.  Phileros  Goethe  here  appears 
in  all  his  strength,  and  writes  the  sovereign 
part  of  his  work,  imparting  the  most  intimate 
confessions  of  his  soul-life  to  the  reader  who 
can  look  through  the  outer  covering  which 
the  artist  throws  over  them  in  the  secretive 


GOTZ  VON  BERLICHINGEN.*'  141 

skill  of  his  art.  Two  women  step  forth  in 
striking  contrast,  the  demonic  and  the  an- 
gelic. The  latter  bears  the  name  of  Maria, 
is  a  sister  of  Gotz's  wife,  and  loves  the  faith- 
less villain  Weislingen,  who  deserts  her 
though  she  still  remains  faithful  to  him  and 
attends  with  love  and  prayer  his  last  mo- 
ments. She  speaks  to  him  on  his  death-bed : 
"Forget  all,  may  God  forgive  thee  as  I  do." 
This  scene  (Act  V,  Sc.  10)  is  regarded  as  a 
spiritual  transcript  of  the  last  interview  be- 
tween Goethe  and  Frederika.  Such  was  the 
form  which  the  consciousness  of  his  wrong 
assumed  in  his  soul:  his  first  written  per- 
formance after  the  deed  of  guilt  must  show 
the  atonement.  The  poet  sent  a  copy  of  his 
Gotz  to  Frederika  through  his  friend  Salz- 
mann  at  Strassburg,  with  the  remark :  "Poor 
Frederika  will  feel  herself  consoled  to  some 
extent  when  the  faithless  man  is  poisoned. " 
That  might  be  no  great  consolation  to  her; 
but  to  him  it  may  have  brought  a  brief 
balm. 

But  the  demonic  female  of  the  play  is  really 
its  strongest  character,  and  to  her  we  next 
turn.  Adelheid  is  the  name  of  this  second 
woman  of  the  play,  one  of  the  permanent  per- 
sonalities drawn  by  the  poet.  She  is  the 
subtle  diabolic  enchantress  who  controls  men 
through  their  passion,  rousing  it  to  such  a 


142  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

degree  that  they  are  unable  to  control  it  or 
themselves.  She  cannot  truly  love,  rather 
she  loves  her  power  of  love,  using  it  as  a 
means.  She.  is  verily  a  product  of  the  cor- 
rupt order,  its  striking  symbol,  whose  mean- 
ing is  glimpsed  when  she  checkmates  the 
bishop.  In  her  way  she  may  be  deemed  the 
Titaness,  with  her  serpentine  skill  she  plans 
to  reach  up  and  enmesh  the  young  Emperor, 
head  of  the  State.  Also  she  is  the  foe  of  Gotz, 
with  his  family  life  and  his  devotion  to  his 
wife,  and  she  finds  that  he  is  proof  against 
her  grand  implement,  insidious  passion.  But 
supreme  is  her  fascination  over  Weislingen 
who  is  the  associate  of  Gotz  and  the  accepted 
of  his  sister  Maria.  Thus  Weislingen  be- 
comes the  slight  connecting  link  between  the 
two  very  distinct  parts  of  the  drama. 

So  we  may  designate  Adelheid  to  be  a  fe- 
male Mephistopheles,  the  woman  as  negative 
to  the  social  and  institutional  order  of  her 
age,  the  sexual  anarch  wrho  turns  Love  it- 
self into  the  destroyer  instead  of  the  cre~ 
ator  of  man  and  his  world.  With  her  Satanic 
charm  she  transforms  her  lover,  Weislingen, 
into  her  own  destructive  nature  and  destroys 
him  with  poison.  Still  she  meets  with  the 
doom  of  her  deeds,  through  a  dark  hidden 
Tribunal  which  dispenses  the  judgment  of 
the  Gods  upon  the  criminal  too  strong  or  too 


GOTZ  VON  BERLICHINGEN.*  143 

subtle  for  the  State.  Tims  she  too  gets  the 
penalty. 

Taken  as  a  product  of  art,  the  play  lacks 
unity,  being  a  series  of  vivid  panoramic 
scenes  which  burst  up  rather  capriciously 
with  little  connection.  Composed  of  huge 
boulders  tumbled  over  an  uneven  surface, 
the  work  illustrates  the  seismic  upheaval  of 
the  author  and  of  his  time.  Its  scattered  ap- 
pearance on  the  printed  page  is  typical. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  Shakespeare  was  Goe- 
the's chief  model,  and  there  are  more  indi- 
cations of  a  study  of  Julius  Caesar  than  of 
any  other  play.  Herder's  vigorous  reproach 
was:  "Shakespeare  has  spoiled  you."  Still 
in  its  deepest  note  the  drama  is  not  imitated 
but  original,  not  Shakespearean  but  Goe- 
thean,  and  belongs  to  a  new  genius  and  a  new 
age. 

But  the  deepest  break  in  Gotz  is  that  a  fis- 
sure runs  through  it  which  divides  it  into 
two  dramas,  which  have  been  called  from 
their  central  male  characters,  the  Gotz 
drama  and  the  Weislingen  drama.  The  first 
had  a  political  content  chiefly;  but  that  could 
not  satisfy  the  young  Goethe,  he  could  not 
help  adding  the  love-drama,  in  which  the  fe- 
male characters  especiallly  rise  to  promi- 
nence. Here  we  note  again  our  Phileros  giv- 
ing himself  an  utterance  which  constitutes 


144  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

the  most  intimate  and  vivid  portion  of  the 
play.  The  political  part  sprang  from  his  ex- 
ternal experience  as  advocate  before  the  im- 
perial tribunal  at  Wetzlar;  but  the  amatory 
part  was  his  own  deepest  self  flaming  up  in- 
to expression.  He  would  not  have  been  Goe- 
the the  poet  unless  he  had  introduced  the 
woman-soul,  which  is  here  given  in  its  two 
opposite  poles. 

Accordingly  we  may  say  that  in  Gotz  tho 
genius  of  Goethe  has  suddenly  and  violently 
erupted,  scattering  its  scintillant  particles 
pretty  much  at  random.  It  has  burst  up 
from  central  fires  hitherto  suppressed  under 
the  hardened  and  even  crystallized  layers  of 
the  social  system  of  the  time.  We  are  made 
to  feel  the  gigantic  striving  to  get  free  of 
the  institutional  fetters  crushing  the  new- 
born spirit.  Gotz  on  the  one  side  as  reformer 
or  rather  as  revolutionist,  and  on  the  other 
side  the  environing  long-established  law  and 
custom,  are  the  two  colliding  forces — the 
Titanic  individual  against  the  instituted 
world.  Thus  it  is  an  eternal  theme  and  re- 
curs perpetually  in  one  form  or  other, 
though  at  certain  crises  the  fury  gathers  to 
a  head  and  the  grand  final  overturn  seems  to 
be  at  hand. 

Still  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  Goethe 
makes  his  hero  tragic  and  really  self-undo- 


.*• 

THE  SORROWS  OF  YOUNG  WERTHER.       145 

ing.  In  spite  of  all  the  poet 's  sympathy  Gotz 
is  a  failure  and  his  way  is  the  way  how  not 
to  do  the  thing.  One  cannot  help  remarking 
that  this  was  the  deeper  though  unconscious 
spirit  of  the  author  welling  up  to  the  sur- 
face at  last  and  determining  the  result  al- 
most in  spite  of  himself.  Thus  the  institu- 
tional world  triumphs  and  is  the  real  hero  of 
the  conflict  rather  than  Gotz,  though  the  lat- 
ter started  a  beneficial  hurricane  in  which  he 
himself  perished. 

Hereafter  Goethe  will  come  to  recognize 
this  unconscious  element  in  himself  and  in 
the  world.  The  Titanic  poet  is  next  to  learn 
consciously  his  own  lesson  that  Titanism  is 
tragic;  he  escapes  his  own  fate  by  making 
his  hero  fated;  he  slays  Gotz  and  therein 
saves  Goethe. 


II. 

The  Sorrows  of  Young  Werther. 

So  runs  the  title  of  a  work  by  Goethe 
which  probably  stands  next  to  his  Faust  in 
fame,  in  its  typical  character  of  the  author 
and  his  time,  as  well  as  in  its  power  stimu- 
lating reproduction  in  other  writers.  We 


146  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

place  it  just  after  Gotz,  coupling  the  two 
productions  as  the  greatest  completed  works 
of  the  poet's  Frankfort  Epoch. 

The  pivotal  fact  which  gave  to  Goethe  his 
theme  as  well  as  its  outcome  in  the  lover's 
suicide,  was  the  following.  There  was  a  young 
official  located  at  Wetzlar,  where  Goethe  was 
staying,  by  the  name  of  Carl  Wilhelm  Jeru- 
salem, who  had  fallen  desperately  in  love 
with  the  beautiful  wife  of  a  prominent  diplo- 
mat of  that  place.  Ardent,  unhappy  Jerusa- 
lem— strange  name  for  a  German — had  al- 
lowed his  passion  to  carry  him  beyond  the 
bounds  of  propriety,  and  he  had  to  be  for- 
bidden the  house  by  the  husband.  He  took 
the  repulse  so  seriously  that  on  the  30th  of 
October,  1772,  he  ended  his  life  with  the  bul- 
let of  a  pistol — the  tragic  victim  of  an  im- 
possible love. 

Now  it  so  happened  that  Goethe  at  the  mo- 
ment when  he  heard  of  this  suicide  and  its 
cause,  was  in  the  same  forlorn  condition.  He 
had  become  deeply  enamored  during  his  stay 
at  Wetzlar  of  a  young  lady  who  was  betrothed 
to  another  and  hence  out  of  his  reach.  Thus 
he  also  was  writhing  tumultuously  in  the 
pangs  of  a  hopeless  love,  when  he  heard,  as 
it  were  the  crack  of  Jerusalem's  pistol  as  the 
only  solution  of  his  woe-begone  conflict.  The 
event  stirred  him  from  the  last  depths  of  his 


THE  SORROWS  OF  YOUNG  WERTHER.       147 

being,  and  drove  him  to  find  some  mitigation 
of  his  awful  restlessness  and  world-weari- 
ness. But  his  antidote  was  not  the  pistol  but 
the  pen,  which  had  the  power  of  saving  the 
author  even  if  it  slew  the  hero. 

The  name  of  the  young  lady  was  Charlotte 
Buff,  famed  undyingly  as  Goethe's  Lotte. 
She  married  faithfully  her  betrothed,  Herr 
Kestner,  who  curiously  had  loaned  the  fatal 
pistol  to  Jerusalem,  of  course  for  a  different 
purpose,  and  who  first  told  the  story  of  the 
suicide  to  Goethe,  in  whose  soul  at  once  the 
sufferings  of  young  Werther  began  to  seethe 
and  roll  in  violent  paroxysms  deathward.  In 
some  such  condition  the  poet  remained  for 
more  than  a  year,  brooding  over  his  cosmic 
egg,  till  on  February  1,  1774,  it  began  to 
hatch  out.  For  the  record  runs  that  on  said 
day  he  started  to  compose  his  work  finally, 
and  he  pushed  on  steadily  till  it  was  com- 
pleted in  some  two  months,  evidently  from 
material  already  prepared  for  the  most  part. 

In  the  present  work  the  part  of  Phileros  is 
supreme  and  all-embracing,  it  alone  is  the 
whole  and  nothing  else  is.  We  see  Goethe  as 
the  lover  indeed,  but  especially  as  the  lover 
of  love;  he  coddles  his  emotion,  dwells  in  its 
joys  and  even  more  in  its  pains ;  he  caresses 
his  amatory  sorrows,  and  shows  himself  in 
in  love  with  love's  keenest  sufferings.  Phile- 


148  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

ros  has  a  great  new  experience ;  lie  is  not  now 
the  victor  but  the  vanquished,  he  makes  the 
heart 's  full  sacrifice,  but  without  the  requital. 
Hitherto  he  has  been  conqueror,  as  in  the  case 
of  Gretchen,  Katharina,  and  Frederika;  but 
now  he  has  to  feel  the  unrequited,  the  hope- 
less, the  impossible  in  the  deepest  strain  of 
his  nature.  The  shock  reaches  down  to  the 
primal  fount  of  his  very  selfhood  and  com- 
pels to  relief  through  literary  utterance. 

So  we  bring  before  us  the  second  world- 
shaking  eruption  of  Goethe's  Frankfort  vol- 
cano: this  book  known  as  The  Sorrows  of 
Young  Werther,  which  kept  fermenting  in 
him  nearly  the  whole  Epoch,  starting  in  1772 
and  ending  with  the  publication  of  the  novel 
in  Autumn,  1774.  The  two  works  Gotz  and 
Werther  are  altogether  the  greatest  of  the 
poet's  early  creations ;  very  different  in  many 
ways,  they  nevertheless  show  that  they  be- 
long to  the  same  spiritual  upheaval.  Goethe 
fifty  years  later  speaking  to  Eckermann  (Jan. 
2,  1824)  indicates  this  purport:  "In  the 
much-bespoken  Wertherism,  we  observe  that 
it  belongs  in  the  life-experience  of  every  in- 
dividual who  with  an  inborn  free  instinct  has 
to  learn  to  accommodate  himself  to  the  nar- 
rowing forms  of  an  antiquated  world."  So 
it  comes  that  both  works  manifest  a  conflict 
with  an  old  instituted  order,  against  which 


THE  SORROWS  OF  YOUNG  WERTHER.       149 


they  revolt,  with  tragic  result,  be  it  noted  in 
each  case. 

The  first  striking  difference  which  grips 
the  mind  of  the  reader  is  that  Wertherb&s 
far  more  concentration  in  form,  in  matter 
and  in  spirit  than  Gotz  whose  scattered  char- 
acter was  above  observed.  There  is  now  the 
one  central  ever-recurrent  theme,  and  the  one 
central  character  with  whom  two  others  are 
conjoined,  the  woman  and  her  betrothed,  both 
of  whom  stand  firm  as  the  rock  of  ages,  while 
an  ocean  of  sentiment  dashes  madly  about 
them.  To  be  sure  .we  shall  later  point  out 
that  a  deep  line  of  scission  enters  the  work 
before  it  is  completed.  The  interest,  however, 
is  that  of  one  soul  which  gives  itself  up  to 
emotion  as  its  Fate  which  swirls  it  around  in 
an  incessant  tempest.  From  this  side  it  is 
another  portrayal  of  Goethe 's  own  person- 
ality at  the  present  stage,  and  a  confession 
as  well  as  a  redemption.  The  poet  here  tackles 
that  stormy  Titanic  emotion  of  his,  often 
threatening  self-destruction  till  he  works  it 
over  and  wrings  it  out  of  himself  by  writ,  get  - 
ting  thus  at  least  a  partial  release  by  slaying 
not  himself,  but  the  semblance  of  himself  at 
this  epoch  of  his  evolution  conjured  up  by  his 
art. 

Goethe  himself  has  depicted  (Autobiogra- 
phy, 13th  Book)  with  startling  vividness  how 


150  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

near  lie  came  in  his  own  person  to  tins  final 
elimination  of  the  earthquakes  of  his  emotion. 
We  shall  cite  the  famous  passage  about  the 
actual  implement  of  suicide :  ' '  Among  a  con- 
siderable collection  of  weapons,  I  possessed 
a  handsome  well-sharpened  dagger.  Every 
night  I  laid  it  beside  by  bed,  and  before  I  put 
out  the  candle  I  would  try  whether  it  were 
possible  to  thrust  the  sharp  point  a  couple  of 
inches  down  into  my  bosom.  But  I  never 
could  quite  succeed  and  at  last  I  laughed  my- 
self- out  of  the  notion,  flinging  away  my  hypo- 
chrondriacal  specters,  and  concluding  to 
live."  Still  this  was  not  enough,  he  had  not 
yet  saved  himself  in  the  only  way  he  could 
be  saved.  His  salvation  must  come  through 
his  genius  which  redeems  him  by  the  written 
confession.  So  the  account  runs  on:  "But 
to  be  able  to  accomplish  this  with  the  joy  of 
success,  I  had  to  bring  a  poetic  problem  to 
fulfilment,  in  which  all  that  I  had  felt,  thought 
and  dreamed  upon  this  weighty  point,  should 
be  put  into  language. "  Such  is  his  only 
course  of  redemption ;  ink  must  flow  through 
his  pen,  else  blood  will  gush  out  of  his  heart. 
So  we  may  fancy  him  sharpening  his  goose- 
quill  with  that  keen-edged  dagger  of  his  in- 
stead of  plunging  it  into  his  bosom. 

Let  us  return,  however,  to  consider  some 
contrasts  between  Gotz  and  Werther.     The 


THE  SORROWS  OF  YOUNG  WERT&ER.       151 

one  celebrates  Will,  the  other  Feeling",  thus 
they  hinge  on  two  very  different  elements  of 
the  human  Self.  The  full  name  of  the  dra- 
matic hero,  Gotz  "with  the  iron  hand,  suggests 
rude  might,  blood  and  iron,  militarism  if  you 
please.  But  the  record  of  the  sentimental 
hero,  Werther,  proclaims  his  sufferings  upon 
the  title-page,  intimating  his  internal  lacera- 
tions. To  us  both  characters  seem  typically 
Teutonic,  prophetic  of  the  Germany  of  to- 
day, combining  crass  strength  with  tender 
sentimentality.  Many  a  parallel  might  be 
drawn  between  Gotz  and  Bismarck,  in  their 
common  assault  upon  the  abuses  of  the  old 
empire,  yet  dropping  back  to  it  finally,  and 
seeking  to  restore  it  in  the  last  instance.  The 
ancient  medieval  system  would  seem  to  have 
been  the  political  ultimate  lying  back  of 
these  two  greatest  German  men  of  our  mod- 
ern era:  the  poet  and  the  statesman.  Even 
Faust  with  all  his  denials,  does  not  deny  the 
old  Imperial  Order,  but  fights  for  it  and  in- 
deed wins  its  victory  in  the  Fourth  Act  of  the 
Second  Part  of  the  drama. 

Still  further  we  may  draw  the  lines  of  dis- 
tinction :  the  one  is  essentially  masculine,  the 
other  feminine.  As  works  of  art,  Gotz  is  a 
man,  Werther  is  a  woman ;  the  two  books  are 
to  our  mind  spiritually  sexed.  Perhaps  some- 
thing of  the  kind  lies  in  all  human  produc- 


152  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

tions:  they  are  dominantly  male  or  female, 
sharing  in  the  profoundest  creative  fact  of 
Nature  herself,  the  sexual  diremption.  On 
the  whole  we  may  say  that  the  drama  is  male, 
the  novel  female.  At  some  future  time  all 
original  works  are  going  to  be  classed  in  that 
way,  with  the  addition  that  not  a  few  perhaps 
will  have  to  be  labeled  as  neuter.  So  we  may 
say  that  Goethe  the  man  utters  himself  in 
Gotz,  but  Goethe  the  woman  in  Werther.  And 
all  through  his  career  moves  not  merely  the 
man  Goethe  but  the  woman  Goethe,  the  latter 
being  really  the  best  portion  of  his  genius 
and  inherited  from  his  mother,  as  he  himself 
often  recognized.  But  now  comes  the  curi- 
ous contrast  and  rather  the  deepest  stroke  of 
art  in  the  whole  book :  the  woman  is  the  man 
as  an  offset  to  the  man  being  woman ;  Lottie 
is  really  the  bearer  of  the  masculine  part  of 
the  entire  transaction  while  Werther  is  more 
the  feminine,  if  not  effeminate.  She  is  never 
upset  by  her  emotion,  but  holds  steady  course 
mid  the  vast  spume  of  sentiment  surging 
around  her  and  even  over  her  head ;  the  solid 
practical  German  maiden  as  precise  house- 
keeper, cutting  bread  and  butter  for  her  little 
sisters  and  brothers,  God  bless  her!  She  is 
prose,  but  good  hearty  buxom  prose,  over 
against  the  incalculable  poetic  effervescence 
to  which  she,  along  with  her  betrothed  in  far 


THE  SORROWS  OF  YOUNG  WERT&ER.       153 

less  prominence,  stands  as  the  bulwark  im- 
movable. And  that  is  a  vast  new  experience 
for  our  victorious  Goethe,  now  conquered  by 
a  simple  girl  of  the  folk.  But  this  it  is  which 
rouses  the  Titan  in  him  all  the  more ;  the  ob- 
stacle he  lashes  against  with  all  the  fury  of 
his  feelings,  but  he  has  to  give  up  and  retire. 

Werther  is  a  work  of  wider  appeal  than 
Gotz,  which  is  national,  while  the  former  is 
supra-national,  and  rises  into  the  realm  of 
universal  literature.  The  modern  man  with 
his  brooding  contorsions  comes  emphatically 
upon  the  stage  and  begets  a  new  expression 
in  a  new  art  form :  the  psychic  novel  in  which 
the  incidents  are  internal.  Undoubtedly 
Rousseau  had  opened  this  mine  in  his  Nou- 
velle  Hetoise,  whose  flight  back  to  Nature  we 
find  re-echoed  in  Goethe's  book.  Herein  lies 
another  pivotal  distinction  of  Werther  from 
Gotz:  the  latter  is  objective  in  its  trend, 
based  upon  history,  dealing  with  the  actual 
world  of  institutions,  while  the  former  is  sub- 
jective largely,  showing  the  deep  upheavals 
of  the  underself,  giving  the  soul's  adven- 
tures, a  psychic  Odyssey  whose  Ulysses  is 
also  in  search  of  * '  sunny  Ithaca  and  prudent 
Penelope. "  The  setting  of  Gotz  is  medieval, 
but  that  of  Werther  is  still  most  modern  in 
its  modernity. 

Moreover  the  people  of  Werther  with  their 


154  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

surroundings  are  all  of  the  simple  middle 
class,  having  no  nobleman  nor  plebian,  while 
Gotz  takes  up  every  social  class,  from  em- 
peror down  to  the  rabble,  all  of  which  adds 
to  the  dispersion  of  its  action.  This  homo- 
geneity of  Werther  gives  point  to  its  inten- 
sity and  unity.  Its  epistolary  form  enables 
it  to  hit  home,  sending  bullet  after  bullet  to 
the  one  spot.  This  form  was  not  new,  Smol- 
lett in  England  and  Rousseau  in  France  had 
famously  employed  it.  But  Goethe  as  letter 
writer  was  the  greatest  that  ever  lived,  his 
correspondence  runs  through  his  whole  life 
and  is  no  small  part  of  his  literary  output, 
both  as  to  quantity  and  quality. 

Still  there  are  two  parts  to  Werther  and 
both  are  different.  The  characters  change, 
though  the  names  are  retained  in  the  second 
part;  Lottie  is  really  dethroned  by  a  new 
lady-love;  and  Albert  the  betrothed  is 
strangely  transformed.  This  transition  is 
known  to  have  corresponded  with  events  in 
Goethe's  life  at  this  time.  The  fact  is  that 
Werther  from  first  to  last  spans  the  entire 
Frankfort  Quadrennium,  starting  with  poet 's 
love  for  Charlotte  Buff;  the  suicide  of  the 
love-lorn  youth  Jerusalem  occurred  some- 
what later  and  showed  him  the  tragedy  of 
love  as  an  actual  fact.  His  second  sweet- 
heart in  the  course  of  the  novel  was  Maxie 


THE  SORROWS  OF  YOUNG  WERTHER.       155 

Laroclie,  who  was  soon  married  to  another 
man,  a  grocer  by  the  name  of  Brentano,  and 
madly  jealous  of  the  poet.  When  Goethe 
started  to  writing  he  says  he  finished  it  in  a 
few  weeks,  but  really  its  composition  runs 
through  this  whole  Epoch.  Also  he  changes 
his  literary  bibles  from  Homer  in  the  first 
part  to  Ossian  in  the  second.  Still  the  furi- 
ous reaction  of  emotion  against  the  limits  of 
existence  is  the  same  in  both  parts,  and  the 
world-pain  keeps  up  flamboyant.  There  is  no 
mythus  or  fable,  but  real  life  is  photographed 
directly.  And  he  feels  a  swaying  between 
life  and  death,  which  Goethe  claims  strongly 
was  his  own  condition  at  the  time,  making  all 
existence  seem  unanchored. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  to  these  two  early 
works  of  Goethe,  we  can  trace  two  tendencies 
of  the  novel.  Gotz  was  translated  by  Sir 
Walter  Scott  in  his  young  manhood,  and 
must  have  opened  up  to  the  coming  novelist 
the  medieval  content  which  is  found  in  so 
many  of  his  works  illustrating  more  the  outer 
life  of  man.  On  the  contrary  Werther  can 
well  be  deemed  the  ancestor  of  the  novels  of 
today,  which  dwell  with  so  much  detail  on 
the  inner  life  of  the  emotional  soul.  Thus 
both  productions  have  shown  a  marvelous 
creative  power.  It  has  been  estimated  that 
in  the  first  twenty-five  years  after  Werther 


156  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

more  than  6,000  appeared  in  Germany,  indi- 
cating what  an  ocean  the  author  had  tapped. 

Upon  Goethe's  later  production  Werther 
had  far  more  influence  than  Gotz,  and  helped 
bring  forth  a  line  of  novels  reaching  to  the 
poet's  last  years.  We  can  find  its  traces  in 
M sister's  Apprenticeship,  and  still  more  de- 
cisively in  Elective  Affinities;  and  it  has  its 
kinship  with  certain  parts  of  Meister's  Trav- 
els, Goethe's  last  novel.  In  fact  a  strain  of 
Werther  has  been  noted  in  a  number  of  Goe- 
the's  poems,  notably  in  his  Tasso.  Thus  the 
present  work  is  an  ever-active  fountain  which 
flows  through  the  whole  life-poem  of  the  au- 
thor. So  it  may  be  said  that  the  sorrows  of 
young  Werther  were  peculiarly  Goethe's 
own,  and  remained  his  own  through  the  lapse 
of  all  his  years,  continuing  an  incessant 
source  of  his  literary  productivity. 

This  fact  was  known  and  felt  deeply  by 
Goethe  himself.  His  last  elemental  love,  that 
for  Ulrika,  which  also  starts  the  final  cre- 
ative Epoch  of  his  career,  was  coupled  by 
him  with  that  of  Werther,  which  thus  may  be 
said  to  interlink  the  first  and  last  nodes  of 
his  long  life-poem  through  the  common  bond 
of  the  poet's  love.  The  earliest  and  the  lat- 
est Phileros.  thus  join  hands  through  Wer- 
ther's  woes  of  passion  and  round  out  the 
cycle  of  the  poet's  total  activity.  (See  the 


TITANIC  FRAGMENTS.  157 

poem  called  Trilogy  of  Passion,  with  its 
opening  address  to  Werther,  experienced  and 
written  in  1823.) 


III. 

Titanic  Fragments. 

Doubtless  the  most  striking  manifestation 
of  the  explosive  character  of  this  Epoch  is 
seen  in  the  mountainous  fragments  strewn 
through  its  four  years.  In  a  letter  to  Herder 
he  figures  his  Muse  as  the  driver  of  a  team  of 
four  wild  untamed  steeds,  rearing,  kicking, 
wrestling  with  the  reins  and  with  one  an- 
other; still  the  master  if  he  can,  is  to  bring 
about  that  all  their  i  i  sixteen  feet  move  to  one 
beat  toward  the  goal."  The  time  was  an 
ecstacy  of  creative  power  in  which  he  was 
possessed  by  what  he  often  calls  Nature. 
"How  I  long,  0  Nature,  after  thee,  to  feel 
thy  truth  and  love ;  thou  becomest  to  me  a  joy- 
ous fountain  gushing  forth  out  of  a  thousand 
pipes."  And  this  might  of  Nature  is  su- 
premely the  limit-breaker  of  the  whole  finite 
world:  "Thou  art  what  expands  this  nar- 
row existence  of  mine  to  infinity. ' '  This  ele- 
mental view  of  himself  and  of  his  power  oc- 
curs often  in  his  verse  and  prose. 

Such  an  illimitable  tendency  could  seldom 


158  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

produce  complete  tilings  which  after  all  must 
be  limited.  In  this  mood  the  poet  cannot 
rightly  form,  and  hence  brings  forth  frag- 
ments which  will  only  indicate  his  "striving 
for  the  infinite. "  Indeed  he  becomes  a  frag- 
ment too ;  thus  we  may  conceive  Goethe  dur- 
ing this  Epoch  as  a  Titanic  fragment  in  him- 
self, producing  Titanic  fragments. 

So  now  we  come  to  look  at  the  colossal 
torsos  of  literary  plans  during  this  Frank- 
fort Quadrennium,  which  lie  scattered  along 
Goethe 's  printed  page  as  huge  boulders  of  his 
volcanic  overflow.  There  is  no  more  amaz- 
ing exhibition  of  his  enormous  natural  en- 
ergy than  these  irregular  broken  blocks  of 
great  poems  which  he  conceived  and  threw 
out  in  his  Titanic  spasms.  Many  of  them  are 
unfinished,  are  indeed  unfinishable;  but  they 
remain  the  more  impressive  witnesses  of  his 
original  native  power.  They  still  show  the 
suddenness  of  their  origin,  the  prodigious 
throes  of  creation,  as  born  directly  of  Nature 
herself.  Thus  they  stand  in  contrast  with 
the  two  finished  products  of  this  Quadren- 
nium, especially  Gotz  and  Werther,  which 
show  at  least  some  intentional  construction 
in  their  organism,  made  up  as  they  are  of 
vivid  jets  of  this  same  central  energy.  The 
volcano  Goethe  has  left  these  monstrous  lava 
figures,  partial  gigantic  outlines  lying  pros- 


TTTANIC  FRAGMENTS.  159 

trate  on  the  ground  as  if  Heaven-defying 
prodigies  pierced  by  the  bolt  of  Jove.  For 
after  all  to  the  poet  himself  this  frenzy  of 
production  was  tragic,  and  died  away  like 
the.  very  Titan;  the  mood  had  its  beginning 
and  close  in  the  present  Epoch  of  his  career. 
Hereafter  we  shall  see  him  passing  from  this 
time  of  all  overturning  seismic  disturbance 
to  a  classic  sunny  repose  which  will  be  an- 
other stage  of  his  comprehensive  life.  But 
now  we  are  to  stroll  through  the  field  of  these 
significant  fragments,  and  put  them  together 
as  a  phase  of  our  poet's  evolution.  Let  it  be 
said  that  this  phase  is  to  be  found  in  every 
great  writer — some  of  them  never  get  over 
it — indeed  it  has  its  counterpart  more  or  less 
distinctly  in  every  individual. 

Of  these  fragmentary  remains,  we  may 
first  note  that  some  are  taken  from  History, 
some  from  Fable,  and  some  from  Human  Na- 
ture directly  (like  Werther).  To  be  sure 
they  all  go  back  to  the  author's  personal  ex- 
perience, which  took  shape  in  works;  they 
likewise  belong  to  his  present  utterance  of 
Titanism. 

Beginning  with  the  historic  figures  we  note 
three  if  not  four.  We  behold  Goethe's  poetic 
insight  seizing  the  mighty  individualities 
which  stand  at  the  grand  nodes  of  the  re- 
corded Past  and  are  the  pivotal  souls  of  its 


160  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

supreme  events.  Here  we  place  the  poet's 
early  attempt  to  set  forth  Socrates,  the  Greek 
epochal  thinker  who  more  than  any  other 
man  forms  the  transition  from  a  religious  to 
a  philosophic  world-view,  and  thus  estab- 
lishes forever  the  new  European  discipline 
of  the  spirit,  namely  philosophy,  even  if  there 
were  philosophers  before  him.  Goethe,  how- 
ever, after  coddling  this  favorite  theme  for 
some  years  found  that  he  was  not  the  man  to 
portray  in  poetry  the  great  philosophic  rev- 
olution, if  indeed  it  could  be  deemed  a  right 
poetic  theme.  Another  of  his  plans  derived 
from  History  was  to  write  a  drama  of  Julius 
Caesar,  probably  incited  by  Shakespeare's 
masterpiece.  Thus  he  would  grapple  with 
the  character  who  more  than  any  other  is  the 
political  turning-point  of  antiquity,  whose 
colossal  form  still  hovers  mistily  over  Eu- 
rope and  her  States-system.  But  this  sub- 
ject also  was  not  rightly  Goethe's,  whose  bent 
was  not  political  or  world-historical,  and  so 
he  resigned  it,  leaving  only  a  few  stray  rags 
as  he  says.  But  longer  and  more  deeply  he 
worked  over  his  Mahomet,  central  figure  pri- 
marily of  a  great  religious  revolution  which 
also  had  its  far-reaching  political  side,  tear- 
ing Asia  from  Europe,  halving  Christendom 
through  a  new  faith  and  a  new  government, 
and  starting  a  fresh  period  of  the  World's 


TITANIC  FRAGMENTS.  161 

History.  In  his  Autobiography  (Book  14, 
toward  the  end)  the  poet  has  indicated  what 
most  deeply  drew  him  to  the  character  of 
Mahomet,  who  at  first  "sought  to  impart  the 
divine  idea  in  himself  to  his  environment. 
But  he  collided  thereby  with  the  rude  world, 
and  in  order  to  win  it  had  to  come  down  and 
be  equal  to  it,  wherein  he  renounced  his  lofty 
excellence. ' '  This  thought  was  also  wakened 
in  the  poet,  as  usual  by  living  examples  be- 
fore him,  which  he  recounts.  Of  this  Ma- 
homet drama,  three  fragments  remain,  most 
famous  of  which  is  the  song  of  the  victorious 
prophet,  setting  forth  the  rapid  rise  of  the 
new  doctrine  like  a  small  mountain  rivulet 
which  takes  up  all  other  streams  in  its  course, 
at  first  peacefully  and  then  by  violence  and 
war's  triumph.  Years  afterward  (in  1799) 
Goethe  was  still  drawn  to  the  same  theme  and 
translated  Voltaire's  drama  of  Mahomet, 
though  in  a  very  different  mood  from  the 
present  one.  The  two  views  of  the  same  great 
character  are  worth  comparing,  as  they  show 
two  ways  of  conceiving  such  men  as  well  as 
two  different  stages  of  Goethe's  own  life-evo- 
lution. 

Such  are  the  three  dramas,  a  philosophic, 
a  political,  and  a  religious,  conceived  during 
this  time  (to  them  perhaps  Egmont  ought  to 
be  added,  though  completed  in  a  different  pe- 


162  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

riod).  Vast  are  the  broken  disjointed  out- 
lines, revealing  the  poet's  desperate  stress  to 
utter  what  surged  within  him.  No  little^  na- 
tional themes  are  these,  but  the  outstretch 
grasps  for  grandest  world-historical  events 
and  personages;  still  the  human  limit  is  up- 
on him,  the  youthful  Titan,  and  he  can  pro 
duce  only,  Herculean  torsos.  Properly  the 
historic  spirit  lay  not  in  the  field  of  his  high- 
est Genius,  and  he  has  specially  denied  the 
value  of  the  World's  History. 

So  we  may  turn  to  his  work  in  the  realm  of 
the  Mythus,  in  which  he  brought  forth  the 
fragment  indeed,  but  also  the  fulfilment.  For 
Goethe  was  in  the  very  essence  of  him  myth- 
ical, we  may  call  him  mythopoeic,  a  trait 
which  runs  through  his  whole  life  to  its  very 
end,  as  we  may  note  in  the  Second  Part  of 
Faust.  He  has  in  a  humorous  way  marked 
this  supreme  bent  of  his  Nature  as  his  inborn 
desire  of  fabling  (die  Lust  zu  fabuliren) 
which  he  claims  to  derive  from  his  mother. 
The  mythical  substance  of  the  ages  was  verily 
his  favorite  poetic  material,  as  affording  him 
a  freer  treatment  than  history,  and  also  as  be- 
ing more  cognate  with  his  genius.  In  general 
the  grand  figures  of  Mythology  are  more 
plastic  to  the  touch  of  the  shaping  artist  than 
those  already  shaped  by  historic  events. 
Accordingly  we  shall  behold  him  seizing  up- 


TITANIC  FRAGMENTS.  163' 

on  the  legendary  heroes  of  peoples,  all  show- 
ing in  one  way  or  other  his  attitude  of  revolt 
against  the  existent  order  of  their  world.  In 
fact  Goethe  developed  the  Mythus  and  in  the 
My  thus  as  the  native  element  of  his  poetical 
creation  during  his  whole  life,  especially  the 
Greek  and  Teutonic  Mythologies  he  works 
over  from  youth  to  old-age,  reflecting  in  them 
all  the  various  stages  of  his  evolution. 

In  this  sphere  we  shall  first  place  his  Ti- 
tanic Prometheus,  a  dramatic  fragment  writ- 
ten in  1773,  which  was  followed  about  a  year 
later  by  a  rhythmic  monologue  put  into  the 
mouth  of  the  same  defiant  Titan  who  ex- 
presses his  contempt  for  the  Gods,  and  lays 
stress  upon  his  work  of  forming  men  like 
himself,  "to  suffer,  to  weep,  and  to  rejoice, 
and  to  care  not  for  thee,  0  Zeus,  as  I  do  not." 
Such  was  the  Titan  Prometheus,  the  original 
man-shaper  against  the  Gods,  voicing  the  Ti- 
tan Goethe  who  also  has  been  shaping  men 
in  his  writ  during  this  Epoch,  hostile  to  the 
existent  order.  Already  the  poet  has  com- 
pared Shakespeare  to  Prometheus  as  maker 
of  men,  "breathing  into  them  the  breath  of 
his  Genius."  But  years  before  Goethe  the 
English  Shaftsbury  had  said:  "The  poet  is 
a  second  creator,  a  Prometheus  under  a  Ju- 
piter." So  the  Promethean  idea  lay  already 
in  the  time,  and  at  the  Goethean  home  in 


164  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

Frankfort  there  was  the  revolt  of  the  son  as 
creative  Prometheus  against  the  father  as 
wielder  of  transmitted  authority.  This  Pro- 
methean man  is  indeed  made  mortal,  but  his 
death  is  to  be  enacted  as  his  final  transfigur- 
ation. In  an  exalted  passage  of  the  dramatic 
fragment,  Prometheus  describes  man's  ris- 
ing through  ecstacy  till  he  embraces  a  world, 
becoming  one  with  the  All:  "then  the  man 
dies."  So  the  poet  casts  an  image  of  him- 
self as  Titan  at  this  time  in  the  old  legend, 
which  by  the  way  kept  haunting  him  long 
afterwards,  and  will  insist  upon  a  new  utter- 
ance in  his  much  later  drama  called  Pandora. 
Next  we  are  to  observe  Goethe  passing 
from  an  Hellenic  to  a  Semitic  mythical 
theme,  to  the  Wandering  Jew.  Of  this  com- 
position, a  narrative  poem  in  doggerel  verse, 
there  remain  a  number  of  disjointed  tatters 
large  and  small.  In  his  Autobiography  (15th 
Book)  the  poet  tells  quite  fully  his  plan, 
which  does  not  agree  very  well  with  this 
poem  written  many  years  before.  Ahasverus, 
the  Jewish  shoemaker,  meets  with  the  cross- 
bearing  Christ  and  through  a  kind  of  curse 
is  made  to  start  on  his  wanderings.  The  Ti- 
tanic element  of  the  poet  is  seen  in  the  scoff- 
ing attacks  upon  the  established  religion  of 
Christianity,  especially  upon  the  clergy  who 
are  represented  in  striking  contrast  with 


TITANIC  FRAGMENTS.  165 

Christ  himself.  The  mocking  burlesque  tone 
jars  with  the  earnestness  of  the  theme.  There 
is  no  wonder  that  Goethe  never  completed  it, 
and  suppressed  it  from  print  for  many  years, 
and  first  published  it  as  a  sample  of  his  fof- 
mer  self  long  since  transcended.  Really 
Christ  is  more  the  leading  figure  of  the  poem 
than  Ahasverus,  and  he  is  made  to  voice  the 
main  satirical  outbursts  against  the  religion 
bearing  his  own  name  and  life-stamp. 

Not  much  is  said  of  the  wanderings  of 
Ahasverus,  which  would  seem  to  be  the  main 
content  of  the  Mythus.  Incidentlly  Goethe 
drops  the  remark  that  he  intended  to  bring 
the  two  Jews,  mythical  and  historical,  to- 
gether for  a  mutual  interview,  Ahasverus 
and  Spinoza.  This  suggestive  legend  re- 
mained long  in  Goethe's  soul;  during  his 
Italian  Journey,  he  speaks  of  it  again  as  one 
of  the  subjects  of  his  creative  brooding.  But 
he  never  finished  the  fragment,  for  which  he 
gives  a  rather  unreasonable  reason. 

The  American  reader  of  today  ponders  why 
the  "great  poet  could  not  work  out  to  a  com- 
pleted product  these  two  supreme  mythical 
figures  adumbrating  peoples  and  ages — Pro- 
metheus and  the  Wandering  Jew.  .The  fact 
would  seem  to  reach  to  the  deepest  move- 
ment of  the  World 's  History.  The  European 
consciousness  has  never  been  able  to  unchain 


166  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

the  fettered  Prometheus,  despite  the  hun- 
dreds of  attempts  by  its  writers,  and  has 
never  been  able  to  bring  home  the  homeless 
Jew,  to  stop  him  from  his  wanderings,  though 
many  a  poet  and  novelist  have  tried  their  pen- 
driving  hands.  In  our  opinion  it  requires  a 
new  social  and  political  order,  which  always 
lies  back  of  and  determines  every  epoch-turn- 
ing literary  masterpiece.  Very  suggestive  is 
it,  therefore,  that  Europe 's  greatest  poet  and 
myth-transformer  has  left  these  two  mighti- 
est mythical  deposists  of  the  old  world  in 
fragmentary  ruins. 

So  these  enormous  Titanic  plans  have 
come  down  to  us  unfilfilled,  hardly  more  than 
signs  of  the  poet's  super-human  aspiration. 
We  may  well  ask  for  the  deeper  reason  why 
he  could  not  bring  to  fruition  such  vast  de- 
signs. After  all,  they  appealed  only  to  one 
side  of  his  nature;  they  did  not  engage  the 
whole  man,  still  less  the  whole  poet.  They 
were  a  vent  for  his  Titanic  protest  against 
the  social  order  of  the  time,  but  not  for  his 
love,  the  deepest  current  of  his  being.  Phile- 
ros  has  no  part  in  the  five  mentioned  torsos, 
magnificent  as  may  be  their  conception.  The 
Titan  as  such  seemed  not  to  share  in  the  soul 
of  love.  So  Goethe  dropped  him,  had  to  drop 
him  as  inadequate  to  his  profoundest  self-ex- 
pression. 


FAUST.  167 

Now  the  curious  fact  rises  to  the  surface 
that  there  was  one  of  these  Titanic  frag- 
ments of  the  present  Epoch  which  Goethe  did 
complete,  though  he  took  his  whole  life  for 
the  work.  This  was  his  Faust,  which  also 
burst  forth  during  the  Frankfort  Quadren- 
riium.  But  it  had  also  the  element  of  love 
represented  in  Margaret  as  well  as  the  ele- 
ment of  Titanism  represented  in  the  hero 
Faust.  Phileros,  therefore,  finds  his  deepest 
utterance  in  this  work;  indeed  his  part  is  its 
chief  attraction  today.  Hence  the  loveless 
Titanic  fragments  stayed  as  they  were  first 
erupted  by  the  poet  in  his  volcanic  convul- 
sions. To  him  in  later  life  they  simply  ap- 
peared like  the  rude  outbursts  of  a  former 
geologic  era.  But  his  Faust  became  his  dar- 
ling for  life,  and  so  we  may  look  at  it  sep- 
arately in  its  early  shape. 


IV. 

Faust. 

There  is  no  intention  here  of  giving  an  ac- 
count of  the  completed  Faust;  merely  we 
would  mark  its  first  appearance  during  the 
present  creative  tension  of  the  poet.  It  will 
rise  repeatedly  to  the  surface  in  the  course  of 


168  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

this  narrative.  Indeed  of  all  Goethe's  single 
poems,  Faust  has  the  best  claim  for  repre- 
senting his  life-poem;  still  it  is  not  his  life- 
poem  by  any  means,  which  must  include  in  its 
sweep  all  his  works,  and  whose  theme  is  his 
total  achievement. 

So  there  is  one  Mythus,  that  of  Faust, 
which  Goethe,  wrestling  over  during  this 
genetic  Quadrennium,  was  destined  to  com- 
plete, but  only  after  he  had  poured  into  it  his 
whole  life.  We  may  suppose  that  this  Teu- 
tonic Mythus  was  closer  to  him  than  Hellenic 
Prometheus,  or  Semitic  Ahasverus.  Some 
years  ago  the  early  Faust,  known  as  the  Ur- 
faust  was  discovered,  though  we  cannot  tell 
how  much  of  it  was  written  at  Frankfort  and 
how  much  of  it  later  at  Weimar.  Indeed  some 
bits  seem  to  have  been  composed  when  the 
poet  was  only  twenty  years  old,  according  to 
his  own  statement,  which  would  throw  its 
start  back  to  1769.  And  the  legend  of  Faust 
was  known  to  Goethe's  childhood  through 
puppet-play  and  folk-book,  and  possibly 
through  his  mother 's  gift  of  story-telling.  At 
any  rate  the  theme  of  Faust  saturated  his 
,whole  life,  quite  from  infancy  to  his  last  pen- 
stroke. 

There  is  evidence,  however,  that  during  his 
Frankfort  upburst  of  creativity,  he  was 
deeply  occupied  with  a  Faust  drama,  which 


.*• 

FAUST.  169 

expressed  one  phase  of  his  Titanism,  his  re- 
volt against  the  limit  of  man's  knowledge. 
But  there  was  now  made  an  addition  which 
belongs  peculiarly  to  this  epoch :  the  story  of 
Margaret  which  he  never  could  have  written 
except  for  his  experience  with  Frederika. 
Thus  he  conjoins  to  Faust  the  simple  country- 
maiden,  and  puts  into  his  drama  again  the 
confession  of  his  own  guilty  deed,  portraying 
it  with  an  intensity  and  pathos  which  he 
never  attained  afterwards.  As  already  indi- 
cated, literature  was  his  way  of  passing 
through  the  process  of  atonement.  The  poig- 
nancy of  his  own  conscience  he  threw  out  in- 
to that  of  his  characters.  You  may  hear 
Goethe's  own  anguish  in  Margaret's  soul- 
riven  outcries  at  the  Cathedral  or  before  the 
Mater  Dolor osa.  It  would  kill  him  unless  he 
could  get  it  out  of  himself  through  a  propor- 
tionately intense  utterance.  His  art  was  his 
final  relief,  giving  him  shrift  and  absolution. 
Thus  his  expiation  is  not  merely  individual 
but  becomes  universal,  not  alone  for  himself 
but  for  all  and  for  all  time,  through  the  word 
of  the  genius  who,  however,  has  to  suffer  what 
he  writes  and  before  he  writes. 

In  the  Frankfort  Epoch,  then,  he  clapped 
together  the  Faust  my  thus  and  the  Margaret 
story.  Still  there  was  a  great  chasm  between 
these  two  ingredients  of  the  drama,  quite 


170  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

dividing  it  in  twain.  In  the  Urfaust  which 
doubtless  belongs  on  the  whole  to  this  time, 
we  feel  the  deep  separation  which  destroys, 
unity.  But  the  poet  must  have  felt  far  down 
in  his  creative  instinct  that  the  two  elements 
belong  together,  that  they  are  at  their  deep- 
est point  integrating  members  of  one  great 
theme,  though  he  cannot  as  yet  raise  their 
connecting  link  to  light.  This  is  the  problem 
which  occupies  Goethe  for  many  a  year  till  at 
last  we  see  its  solution  in  the  completed 
First  Part  of  Faust,  after  full  forty  suns  had 
ripened  his  early  conception.  He  must  un- 
fold Meph'istopheles  as  the  destroyer  of  Mar- 
garet's world,  evolving  him  out  of  Faust's 
primal  negation. 

Two  more  dramas  of  atonement  he  wrote 
during  this  epoch  for  his  self -torturing  trans- 
gression against  Frederika.  He  could  not 
get  over  it,  remorse  would  soon  steal  back 
upon  him  even  after  he  had  done  penance  and 
said  shrift  in  agonized  writing.  The  result 
was  that  in  no  less  than  five  dramas  he  por- 
trays the  self-reproach  and  punishment  of 
the  faithless  lover;  it  was  just  the  point  in 
them  all  on  which  his  genius  spent  itself  with 
the  greatest  energy.  Says  he:  "The  answer 
of  Frederika  to  my  letter  announcing  my  de- 
parture rent  my  heart,"  and  this  lacerated 
organ  of  his  would  not  heal.  "I  was  guilty, 


FAUST.  171 

I  had  wounded  in  its  last  depths  a  beautiful 
heart,"  says  he,  and  his  own  heart  had  re- 
ceived as  deep  a  thrust  as  hers,  and  kept 
bleeding.  One  temporary  alleviation  he 
could  find ;  let  us  hear  him  tell  it  again  in  his 
Autobiography  (Book  12th) :  "But  when  the 
anguish  over  Frederika  kept  wrenching  me, 
I  once  more  after  my  old  fashion  sought  re- 
lief through  poetry.  I  continued  my  accus- 
tomed confession  by  writing  it  out  in  works 
that  I  might  become  worthy  of  an  inner  abso- 
lution through  this  self-inflicted  expiation. 
The  two  Marias  in  Gotz  and  Clavigo  and  the 
two  detestable  characters  who  are  their  lov- 
ers may  well  be  considered  as  results  of  my 
repentance."  Such  at  least  was  his  way  of 
reparation.  Thus  from  his  first  drama  Gotz 
(1771)  to  Clavigo  (1774),  and  also  through 
his  Stella  (1775),  streams  an  ever-surging 
current  of  volcanic  contrition  for  love's  vio- 
lation. The  two  mentioned  dramas,  Clavigo 
and  Stella,  are  slighter  performances,  very 
rapidly  composed,  but  still  strongly  empha- 
sizing the  one  innermost  theme  of  this  time, 
heart's  sorrow  for  guilt  and  the  immediate 
relief  through  literary  utterance.  But  the 
self-stabbed  wound  never  was  healed,  he  will 
carry  it  in  him  through  life,  with  recurrent 
paroxysms. 

Thus  two  main  strands,  his  outer  Titanic 


172  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

revolt  and  his  inner  Titanic  tribulation  for 
sin  weave  through  this  Frankfort  Quadren- 
nium,  working  often  together,  yet  often  in 
separation.  But  what  an  astounding  produc- 
tivity! It  seems  as  if  the  whole  age  pushed 
to  voice  itself  through  this  one  puny  individ- 
ual, and  would  tear  him  to  pieces  in  its  rush 
for  utterance.  Besides  these  five  completed 
works  (if  we  include  the  Urfaust)  and  the 
colossal  fragments  of  great  enterprises  al- 
ready recounted,  he  wrote  numerous  news- 
paper notices,  chiefly  criticism.  Also  many 
letters  and  many  lyrics  which  show  the  same 
ebullience  of  the  world-stormei*  as  elsewhere. 
Also  quite-  a  list  of  dramatic  skits,  farces, 
spiteful  burlesques  taking  off  individuals 
whom  he  knew,  such  as  Wieland  and  Herder. 
One  may  well  wonder  how  he  survived  it  all. 
Especially  in  these  smaller  pieces  Mephisto- 
pheles  begins  to  peep  out  as  the  scoffing 
clown  of  the  world-order,  or  as  he  appears 
later,  God's  court-fool. 

Truly  Goethe's  genetic  Quadrennium  it  is 
in  which  his  whole  literary  career  starts  to 
germinating.  Here  the  fact  may  be  men- 
tioned that  the  primal  conception  of  Wilhelm 
Meister^  which  unfolds  through  Goethe's  en- 
tire life,  has  been  found  in  this  Frankfort 
Epoch.  Thus  we  may  see  his  first  drama  and 
his  first  novel,  Got 2  and  Werther,  made  uni- 


.*• 

LILT.  173 

versal  in  his  two  supreme  life-works,  the 
drama  Faust  and  the  novel  Meister,  written 
counterparts  of  his  total  selfhood,  whereof 
something  is  to  be  said  hereafter.  We  re- 
gard him  in  the  enormous  strength  and  mul- 
tiplicity of  his  present  literary  utterance,  as 
a  greater  hero  than  any  of  his  heroes,  espe- 
cially in  his  two  leading  roles,  the  Titan  of 
revolt  and  the  Titan  of  expiation. 

But  there  is  one  more  act  to  be  recounted 
of  this  quadrennial  drama  of  the  poet,  and 
that  not  the  least  memorable  and  provocative 
of  the  Muse. 


V. 

Lili. 

Such  is  the  liquid  name  of  the  new  young 
lady  who  gets  intertwined  in  Goethe 's  already 
complex  love-life  during  the  last  year  of  his 
stay  at  Frankfort.  Phileros  yields  to  the 
tender  enthrallment  of  his  emotion,  and  pro- 
ceeds one  step  further  than  he  has  ever  yet 
gone:  he  actually  becomes  betrothed  to  the 
object  of  his  affection,  which  has  not  hap- 
pened before,  and  thus  he  is  fettered  by  a 
new  chain  in  which  custom  or  convention  or 
duty  holds  him  fixed.  How  will  the  Titan 
like  that,  after  his  free  boundless  ranging! 


174  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

Soon  he  begins  to  feel  the  restraint  and  we 
see  him  rattling  at  these  fresh  gyves  with 
many  a  sign  of  impatience  if  not  of  wrath. 
He  has  never  before  been  held  in  the  bond  of 
a  trothplight,  with  its  obligation  and  even 
sacredness.  Such  is  the  new  conflict  in  which 
our  daring  lover  has  become  involved. 

Thus  the  two  sides  of  the  man  meet  in  a 
renewed  desperate  fray.  Or  we  may  fable 
the  matter  thus :  Phileros  and  the  Titan,  al- 
ready having  tested  each  other  in  many  a 
struggle,  now  come  to  their  deepest  collision. 
The  one  is  gentle  and  yielding  and  especially 
delights  in  the  service  of  love,  but  the  other 
is  defiant  of  the  tender  sentiment  and  refuses 
all  service  as  hostile  to  freedom.  Thus  Goe- 
the, at  the  close  of  the  present  Epoch,  is  to 
experience  just  about  the  hardest  inner  bat- 
tle of  his  life  between  the  two  strongest  ele- 
mental powers  of  his  nature. 

It  may  be  here  preluded  that  Goethe  is 
driven  out  of  Frankfort  primarily  by  the 
scourge  of  this  new  passion  and  its  vengeful 
backstroke.  Yes,  here  he  descends  again, 
the  insatiable  Love-God,  the  poet's  dearest 
Olympian  comrade  through  life,  yet  also  his 
severest  punisher.  Let  us  hear  him  describe 
the  divine  epiphany  which  turns  a  new  page 
of  his  heart's  never-ending  history.  "A 
friend  invited  me  to  go  with  him  to  a  little 


LILI.  175 

concert  to  be  given  at  the  house  of  an  eminent 
business  man.  As  I  liked  to  do  everything  on 
the  spur  of  the  moment,  though  it  was  late,  I 
went  with  him.  We  entered  the  spacious  sit- 
ting room  with  a  large  company  around  the 
piano  at  which  the  only  daughter  of  the  house 
took  her  seat  and  played  with  remarkable  fa- 
cility and  grace.  I  stood  near  enough  to  ob- 
serve her  form  and  bearing.  After  the  play- 
ing was  over  I  observed  her  watch  me  closely. 
Thus  we  slyly  eyed  each  other,  and  I  do  not 
deny  that  the  tenderest  sort  of  attractive 
power  began  to  steal  into  my  heart.  On  tak- 
ing my  leave  the  mother  gave  me  to  under- 
stand that  another  visit  would  be  agreeable, 
to  which  invitation  the  daughter  responded 
with  friendly  alacrity.  I  did  not  fail  to  re- 
peat my  call  at  proper  intervals. " 

Thus  Goethe  gets  to  know  on  New  Year's 
Day,  1775,  Lili  Schonemann,  daughter  of  a 
prominent  banker,  deceased,  whose  widow 
kept  up  the  business  and  the  home.  Beauti- 
ful, divine  appearance  of  a  maid  not  yet  sev- 
enteen years  old  by  half  a  year,  yet  level- 
headed, trained  to  social  life  of  which  her 
home  was  quite  a  center,  especially  for  the 
moneyed  aristocracy  of  Frankfort.  Then  fol- 
lows the  sweet  toying  of  tender  souls, 
wreathed  in  the  present  case  with  all  the 
flowers  of  music  and  poetry.  But  just  think 


176  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

of  it !  This  young  girl  has  completely  netted 
in  her  chain  the  bond-breaking  Titan,  now 
the  most  famous  man  in  Frankfort,  and  the 
first  author  in  Germany.  She  must  have  read 
his  Werther,  or  if  she  has  not,  she  certainly 
does  it  now,  and  her  mother  reads  it  too,  one 
may  conceive  the  very  next  day.  Both  of 
course  identify  the  hero  of  that  novel  easily, 
nor  can  they  help  making  the  secret  reflec- 
tion that  the  lover  does  not  now  need  to  kill 
himself  because  his  sweetheart  is  betrothed  to 
another.  No  such  obstacle  is  in  sight,  still 
the  sailing  is  not  smooth.  The  two  families 
belong  to  different  and  somewhat  antagonis- 
tic sets  of  the  Frankfort  community;  father 
Goethe,  of  the  ancient  patriciate  and  of  the 
Lutheran  confession,  does  not  like  this  quite 
recent  moneyed  aristocracy  with  its  display 
and  pretence,  and  with  its  Galvanism  in  re- 
ligion. Still  the  deft  match-maker  appears 
and  harmonizes  the  discords,  so  that  the  be- 
trothal becomes  a  fact. 

What!  the  untamed  Goethe  actually 
noosed!  He  who  was  nicknamed  the  Bear, 
and  even  wild  Indian,  in  his  desperate  return 
to  Nature!  Hear  his  comment:  "It  was  a 
strange  decree  of  overruling  Providence  that 
in  the  course  of  my  singular  life,  I  should  also 
have  experienced  the  feelings  of  one  who  is 
betrothed. "  Then  he  moralizes  upon  the  sit- 


LILT.  Ill 

nation  with  some  satisfaction,  but  soon  be- 
gins to  feel  the  new  restraint.  The  Prome- 
theus in  him  rattles  his  fresh-forged  fetters 
and  starts  to  lurching  on  this  side  and  that  to 
the  infinite  unhappiness  of  the  young  lady 
and  of  himself.  He  gets  an  awful  disgust  at 
the  social  formalities  of  the  Schonemann 
household,  at  the  utterly  common-place  peo- 
ple who  visit  there,  with  nothing  to  say  ex- 
cept business ;  mad  fits  of  jealousy  overwhelm 
him  at  the  sight  of  his  Lili  lavishing  her 
sweetest  smiles  and  blandishments,  which  be- 
longed to  him  only,  on  a  lot  of  socially  impor- 
tant nobodies  who  had  some  money.  In  one 
of  these  moods  he  gives  vent  to  his  bitterly 
humorous  burlesque  called  Lili's  Menagerie. 
Artificiality,  stiffness,  fashion's  servility 
made  the  caged  Bear  roar,  or  rather  made 
the  trammeled  Titan  curse  anew  the  Gods  in 
grim  defiance. 

So  the  battle  rages  up  and  down  for  some 
months,  but  the  outcome  is  an  easy  prophecy. 
The  captive  breaks  loose  and  takes  to  flight, 
making  for  the  mountains  of  Switzerland, 
Nature's  mighty  upheaval  in  the  heart  of 
Europe,  where  he  may  find  sympathy  in  the 
gigantic  Heaven-storming  landscape  of  Al- 
pine summits.  He  reaches  the  top  of  St. 
Gotthard,  whence  he  peers  down  into  plains 
of  Italy,  in  which  classic  land  of  art  his  fa- 


178  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

ther  wished  him  to  take  a  journey.  But  with 
that  one  outlook  he  turns  back  homewards, 
the  Genius  bids  him  wait  as  he  is  not  yet 
ready  for  the  Italian  Journey;  he  has  still  a 
German  discipline  to  undergo.  Not  till  a 
dozen  years  more  have  passed  over  him,  and 
he  has  had  the  training  of  a  wholly  new  Ep- 
och of  life  at  Weimar,  will  he  feel  himself 
driven  to  descend  the  other  side  of  the  Alps. 
Still  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  immediate 
force  which  whirled  him  about  was  his  love 
for  Lili.  That  bond  still  fettered  him,  the  en- 
gagement was  not  yet  broken,  the  problem 
was  unsolved.  So  he  wends  his  way  back  to 
Frankfort. 

Goethe  has  again  set  down  in  a  drama  the 
confession  of  his  peculiar  inner  condition. 
He  was  now  a  man  with  two  loves  in  his 
heart,  and  two  devoted  women  as  their  rep- 
resentatives. This  is  the  general  situation 
in  the  play  called  Stella,  written  in  the 
Spring  of  1775,  when  his  passion  for  Lili  was 
urging  and  scourging  him  at  its  topmost. 
For  the  affair  of  Frederika  still  tossed  might- 
ily his  soul,  and  he  had  lashed  the  tempest 
in  his  memory  to  yet  more  violent  paroxysms 
through  the  recent  composition  of  Clavigo 
and  of  Faust.  Both  these  dramas  have 
stormy  echoes  of  the  Sessenheim  episode,  set 
forth  in  the  two  female  characters  respec- 


LILL  179 

tively,  Marie  and  Margaret,  each  of  deepest 
fidelity  in  contrast  with  the  faithless  lover. 
Thus  the  poet  gibbets  himself  in  writ,  but 
saves  his  own  skin  in  fact.  And  behold  now 
an  additional  betrayal  of  love,  seemingly  in 
the  midst  of  his  hottest  repentance  for  his 
guilt  toward  Frederika.  In  this  frame  of 
mind  he  composes  his  Stella,  the  drama  of 
the  double  lover,  Fernando,  who  is  just  about 
the  most  contemptible  piece  of  a  manikin  that 
ever  spouted  forth  his  meanness  on  the  stage. 
So  Goethe  thought  of  himself  for  we  have  to 
take  him  here  as  self -portraying.  It  is  note- 
worthy that  in  his  Swiss  trip  he  visited 
Strassburg  twice,  both  going  and  coming, 
where  the  all-dominant  fact  filling  his  recol- 
lection must  have  been  the  real  drama  of 
Frederika.  But  at  the  same  time  Lili  would 
flit  across  the  scene — the  high-toned,  elegant 
society  girl,  coupled  with  the  simple  country 
maid  in  a  sort  of  rivalry  round  the  poet,  who 
in  his  written  play  reconciles  them  both  in  the 
common  love  for  himself/  For  each  of  the 
women,  Cecilia  and  Stella,  takes  one  of  his 
hands  and  one  of  his  cheeks,  the  last  words 
of  the  drama  being  "we  are  thine. "  It 
should  be  noted  that  Goethe  long  afterwards 
in  a  very  different  mood  changed  this  early 
ending  and  made  it  tragic,  spoiling  it  as  a 
document  of  his  own  psychological  evolution. 


180  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST, 

From  Goethe's  telling  description  of  Lili 
in  his  Autobiography,  we  get  a  high  notion  of 
her  personal  worth  and  especially  of  her 
own  courage.  When  her  own  family  and  all 
her  social  set  were  seeking  to  separate  her 
from  her  lover,  she  defied  the  whole  opposi- 
tion and  offered  to  flee  with  him  to  distant 
America  which  was  then  in  the  throes  of  its 
own  Revolution.  We  have  to  think  (though 
he  does  not  put  the  matter  in  this  way)  that 
she  dared  him  to  the  flight,  and  he  backed 
down  and  ran  off  in  the  other  direction.  No 
wonder  that  he  paints  himself  so  often  with 
contempt,  with  even  baseness,  from  Weis- 
lingen  to  Fernando,  and  in  sharp  antithesis 
glorifies  his  women.  Soon,  however,  Lili 
herself  becomes  convinced  of  the  impossibil- 
ity of  a  strong  union  of  hearts  with  such  a 
weak-hearted  Titan.  The  bond  drooped,  then 
dropped  asunder  when  the  stormy  unbridled 
poet  quits  Frankfort  and  sets  out  for  Wei- 
mar, where  he  awaits  a  fresh  stage  of  his  ap- 
prenticeship. 

He  had  already  been  approached  by  the 
young  Duke  Karl  August,  and  he  undoubt- 
edly feels  that  he  must  take  a  new  step  in  life. 
The  Frankfort  Epoch  has  definitely  closed 
with  a  kind  of  crash.  He  begins  to  feel  that 
his  Titanism  has  run  its  course  against  the 
social  order,  with  which  in  some  way  he  must 


•*• 

LILI.  181 

become  better  acquainted  and  if  possible  rec- 
onciled. He  sees  that  the  Titan  is  tragic, 
and  he  as  writer  has  shown  him  such  in  a 
literary  way.  The  idea  of  an  official  position 
under  some  prince  was  at  first  repugnant  to 
him  as  it  ran  counter  ' '  to  my  instinct  of  per- 
sonal freedom. "  Then  his  father,  the  proud 
patrician  of  the  free  city  of  Frankfort,  was 
averse  to  such  service  for  his  son.  But  there 
was  no  other  course  to  get  into  the  estab- 
lished life  of  society.  In  one  of  his  later  let- 
ters of  this  present  Epoch  he  indicates  that 
he  feels  his  dawning  limit,  when  "I  have 
learned  political  subordination. ' '  Where  was 
he  to  take  such  a  lesson?  Gradually  he  chose 
the  court  of  Weimar  as  the  school  of  his  com- 
ing discipline. 

Thus  the  Epoch  of  Goethe's  life-poem 
which  we  call  the  Frankfort  Quadrenniuin 
winds  up  in  a  flight  from  his  native  city, 
which  separation  is  not  only  local  but  spirit- 
ual. The  peculiar  manifestation  which  char- 
acterized these  four  volcanic  years  has 
reached  its  cessation.  That  which  we  have 
named  his  Titanism  drops  into  the  back- 
ground of  his  life  and  writing.  The  volcano 
has  spent  its  fury,  has  indeed  erupted  itself. 
But  its  results  will  never  be  lost,  its  products 
will  occupy  the  poet  during  the  rest  of  his 
days.  It  was  essentially  the  elemental  ere- 


182  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

ative  Epoch  of  his  whole  career,  as  so  often 
stated  already. 

In  our  opinion  his  break  with  Lili  was  prac- 
tically his  last  Titanic  act,  which  defied  the 
instituted  order  of  love  and  betrothal  culmi- 
nating in  marriage  and  the  established  fam- 
ily. Then  he  had  to  flee  from  his  home  and 
his  deed.  But  his  chief  separation  was  from 
his  state  of  revolt  against  the  transmitted  in- 
stitutions of  his  race,  or  his  flight  from  his 
Titanism  and  its  Epoch.  He  will  hereafter 
have  resurgences  of  this  Titanic  spirit,  but  as 
a  stage  of  his  life-poem  it  is  over. 

But  Phileros  survives  and  goes  with  his 
genius  to  Weimar  where  he  will  have  another 
sort  of  career.  For  love,  as  already  said, 
is  the  deepest  fact  of  Goethe's  existence,  and 
cannot  be  torn  out  of  him  by  the  harshest 
wrenches  of  fate.  But  along  with  love,  a  new 
discipline  at  Weimar  presents  itself  whose 
portrayal  we  have  now  reached. 


THE  WEIMAR  DECENNIUM.  183 


CHAPTER   THIRD. 

THE  WEIMAR  DECENNIUM. 

Another  Epoch  of  the  poet 's  career  has  ar- 
rived, distinct  from  the  foregoing  one,  and  in 
certain  essential  points  quite  the  opposite. 
From  being  a  free  ranger,  as  he  was  practi- 
cally during  the  previous  four  years  at  Frank- 
fort, he  becomes  a  government  official  bound 
to  place  and  to  a  certain  fixed  routine  of  work. 
Thus  he  is  tethered,  even  if  he  still  enjoys 
many  a  limited  freedom.  He  has  to  fit  him- 
self into  a  pre-established  order,  and  also  to 
help  administer  the  same  in  his  new  calling. 

It  is  evident  that  the  chief  training  here  is 
institutional  subordination,  against  which  he 
has  been  hitherto  recalcitrant.  Thus  he  is 
sent  to  school  to  learn  through  experience  the 
meaning  and  value  of  institutions  of  which  he 
in  his  previous  tendency  had  been  not  simply 
ignorant  but  defiant.  The  transmitted  sys- 
tem of  society  to  which  he  has  shown  no  little 
antipathy,  he  is  at  present  required  to  main- 
tain and  to  conduct  successfully  to  its  goal. 
This  means  the  making  of  a  great  turn  in  the 
round  of  his  life.  He  is  to  conserve,  not  to 
tear  down.  In  this  regard  the  coming  Wei- 


184  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

mar  Epoch  is  quite  the  reverse  of  the  preced- 
ing Frankfort  Epoch. 

Still  we  are  to  observe  that  Goethe  evolves 
and  improves  the  various  governmental  de- 
partments of  which  he  becomes  the  chief  min- 
ister. He  recognizes  the  abuses  and  corrects 
them;  on  certain  lines  he  develops  the  better 
organization  out  of  the  past  antiquated  forms. 
But  the  great  fact  which  interests  us  and 
makes  the  present  time  a  turning-point  of  his 
total  achievement  is  that  he  gets  acquainted 
with  the  instituted  world  at  first  hand,  and 
contributes  to  establish  it,  yea  to  transform  it 
into  a  higher  stage  of  itself. 

The  importance  of  this  new  experience 
upon  his  future  literary  activity  is  manifest. 
The  Titan  is  converted  to  the  social  order 
which  he  wished  to  overthrow ;  the  revolution- 
ist turns  to  the  preserver.  After  his  Weimar 
discipline,  Goethe  can  never  again  drop  back 
into  his  Frankfort  attitude.  He  has  yet  much 
to  write  before  his  eyes  close  for  the  last 
time,  but  his  work  will  show  that  he  has 
passed  through  the  present  Epoch  of  institu- 
tional training. 

As  indicated  by  the  title  of  the  chapter, 
this  social  schooling  of  the  poet  will  last  some 
ten  years,  which  seems  a  long  time.  Perhaps 
it  might  have  been  made  shorter;  still  he  had 
to  drain  the  cup  dry,  and  feel  that  it  was  dry 


THE  WEIMAR  DECENNIUM.  185 

for  him;  that  is,  he  must  find  the  limits  of  the 
present  Epoch  also,  and  at  last  break  over 
them  into  a  still  higher  stage.  Thus  Goethe 
manifests  the  ever-developing  spirit  which 
unfolds  from  one  state  of  excellence  to  an- 
other in  the  ceaseless  sweep  toward  its  high- 
est fulfilment.  He  will  learn  the  lesson  of  this 
long  Decennium  through  direct  practice  of  its 
duties. 

Hence  he  will  have  little  time  or  oppor- 
tunity for  great  literary  works;  indeed  the 
mood  to  make  such  long-continued  and  stress* 
ful  efforts  will  be  quite  wanting,  even  if  he 
sometimes  chafes  at  the  small  written  output 
of  his  brain.  In  fact,  the  most  striking  con- 
trast with  the  preceding  Frankfort  Epoch  is 
the  nearly  total  quiescence  of  his  productive 
Genius  at  present  in  the  Weimar  Epoch;  the 
change  was  so  overwhelming  that  it  struck 
him  almost  dumb  for  a  decade.  Still  we  hold 
that  he  was  at  work,  doing  what  was  neces- 
sary to  make  the  grand  totality  which  we  call 
Goethe.  The  psychological  import  of  these 
ten  years  of  his  Muse's  brooding  silence  must 
be  integrated  with  the  poet's  evolution. 

But  the  deepest  strain  of  the  poet's  char- 
acter, that  of  love,  will  not  be  quiescent  dur- 
ing this  quiescent  Epoch.  ^Phileros  also  goes 
to  Weimar,  and  is  active*  there  in  his  own 
way,  playing  a  unique  part  in  his  life's  his- 


186  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

tory,  of  which  an  account  will  be  given  later. 
Indeed  love  will  stir  the  poet  to  be  creative 
in  this  otherwise  uncreative  time,  and  will 
stimulate  him  to  a  work  which  has  its  signifi- 
cant place  not  only  in  his  life-poem,  but  also 
in  literature  generally  (his  letters  to  Frau 
Von  Stein). 

We  designated  the  Frankfort  Epoch  as 
anti-prescriptive,  hostile  to  everything  in  the 
form  of  transmitted  authority,  and  reacting 
against  the  prescribed  forms  of  education 
which  were  imposed  upon  the  poet  during  his 
youth.  But  at  Weimar  Goethe  as  official  has 
to  accept  prescription  and  indeed  to  enforce 
it,  vindicating  it  in  practice.  Thus  we  may 
regard  this  third  Epoch  of  his  Pre-Italian 
Period  as  a  return  to  the  principle  of  his  first 
Epoch,  and  thereby  forming  a  rounded 
whole,  which  characterizes  the  Period. 
Hence  he  not  only  has  to  receive  prescription, 
from  the  outside,  as  he  did  at  first,  but  he 
has  to  re-make  it  as  a  part  of  himself  and  of 
his  present  vocation.  Herein  we  may  observe 
the  psychical  process,  which  will  also  be 
manifested  in  Goethe 's  entire  career,  and 
which  will  constitute  the  inner  organisation 
of  his  life-poem. 

Accordingly  we  may  well  emphasize  in 
word  and  thought  the  transition  from  Frank- 
fort to  Weimar  as  truly  epochal  in  the  poet's 


. 

THE  WEIMAR  DECENNIUM.  187 

experience.  As  already  indicated,  it  lasts 
some  ten  years  and  more  if  we  date  it  ex- 
actly as  lying  between  Goethe 's  first  arrival 
at  Weimar,  November  1775,  and  his  depar- 
ture from  Carlsbad  for  Italy  September, 
1786.  But  he  was  unsettled  about  his  stay 
at  Weimar  for  some  months,  and  in  spirit 
he  had  set  out  for  Italy  a  good  while  before 
he  actually  started.  Accordingly  we  shall 
name  it  the  Weimar  Ten  Years  of  official 
service,  or  distinctively  the  Weimar  Decen- 
nium.  So  Goethe  himself  has  measured  it, 
looking  back  at  it  from  Rome:  "Than  my 
life  during  the  last  ten  years  I  would  rather 
wish  me  death. ' '  Thus  we  mark  the  bounda- 
ries of  this  Epoch  between  his  two  flights: 
from  Frankfort  to  Weimar,  and  then  from 
Weimar  to  Italy.  And  long  afterwards  the 
old  poet  praised  a  French  critic  (Ampere) 
who  had  specially  designated  this  Epoch: 
"How  correct  is  his  observation  that  I  in 
the  first  ten  years  of  my  Weimar  life  pro- 
duced as  good  as  nothing,  and  that  despair 
drove  me  to  Italy. " 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  deepest  strain 
in  him  was  his  creative  poetic  impulse.  But 
that  had  delivered  its  first  message,  and  he 
was  aware  of  it.  It  was  impossible  for  him 
to  go  on  writing  Werthers  and  Gotzes,  as 
some  German  biographers  hold  that  he  ought 


188  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

to  have  done.  That  work  had  been  wrought 
out  to  a  finish,  and  his  two  last  dramas  of  the 
Frankfort  time  are  repetitions,  quite  dispen- 
sable, very  inferior  to  his  other  workman- 
ship, and  he  knew  it.  His  Titanism  had  ut- 
tered itself  at  its  highest  flood,  and  his  ex- 
pression of  it  remains  lasting,  indeed  typical. 
But  what  step  was  he  to  take  next  in  spiritual 
evolution!  His  genius  or  his  guardian  spirit 
was  correct  in  sending  him  to  Weimar  for  a 
new  dip  in  the  world-order,  for  such  it  was. 
So  it  was  a  necessary  part  of  his  life  as  a 
whole,  as  a  completed  work. 

Undoubtedly  the  prime  physical  necessity 
of  existence  lay  heavy  upon  him,  he  had  to 
earn  his  living.  His  literary  work  though 
popular  brought  to  him  no  adequate  income; 
his  father  was  growing  more  querulous  and 
more  stingy;  his  tried  law  practice  was  odi- 
ous to  him  and  not  remunerative.  Weimar 
had  to  train  him  to  a  vocation,  to  become  a 
member  of  the  social  Whole  by  some  sort  of 
social  service  for  which  society  would  give 
him  a  compensation.  Thus  he  is  to  be  har- 
nessed to  a  vocational  routine  for  his  own 
new  good — the  recalcitrant  Titan  who  had 
rebelled  against  all  order  must  be  put  into 
harness  and  made  to  pull  in  harmony  with 
the  Gods.  The  first  fate  of  man — food,  rai- 
ment and  shelter — he  is  forced  to  grapple 


THE  WEIMAR  DECENNIUM.  189 

with  at  Weimar  and  to  conquer.  But 
the  reward,  yea  the  experience  is  su- 
premely significant:  he  wins  through  him- 
self his  economic  freedom,  the  primal  one 
and  basis  of  all  other  kinds  of  free- 
dom. Let  it  also  be  noted  that  he  now 
acquires  first-hand  knowledge  of  the  socio- 
economic  institution,  which  plays  a  most  im- 
portant role  in  his  later  works — see  Meister, 
and  the  Second  Part  of  Faust.  In  this 
lies  the  first  subjection  of  the  Titan  to  an 
institutional  order,  which  is  his  special  dis- 
cipline at  Weimar.  And  here  we  may  like- 
wise touch  upon  the  fact  that  Goethe  at  Wei- 
mar gets  into  the  employment  of  the  State, 
the  political  Institution,  very  different  from 
the  economic  just  considered.  He  is  to  help 
administer  that  system  against  which  he  had 
protested;  indeed  he  soon  rises  to  be  chief 
officer  of  the  Commonwealth,  the  most  active, 
the  most  far-seeing  and  talented.  It  is  an 
absolute  rule,  that  of  the  Duke,  which  he  rep- 
resents and  rigidly  upholds;  he  is  now  in  the 
service  of  an  imperial  power  not  unlike  that 
against  which  his  Gotz  had  revolted.  Here 
then  lies  the  essential  part  of  Goethe's  new 
discipline:  he  must  realize  both  in  his  prac- 
tice and  in  his  thought  that  institutional 
world  which  previously  he  had  made  his  hero 
assail.  Still  Gotz  in  the  drama  was  tragic; 


190          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

we  see  that  the  poet  is  now  reaching  back  to 
that  power  against  which  his  Gotz  dashed 
himself  to  pieces.  Thus  the  Titan  is  getting 
reformed  and  transformed,  but  it  will  take 
him  a  good  while,  ten  years  indeed  of  severe 
schooling,  which  has  its  drawback  in  the  al- 
most total  cessation  of  his  literary  creativ- 
ity. But  his  one  supreme  task  is  to  de-Titan- 
ize  himself  in  preparation  for  the  greater 
work  which  is  to  come. 

Nevertheless  there  is  a  strain  of  discon- 
tent, a  secret  feeling  of  mal-adjustment  run- 
ning through  this  Epoch,  especially  in  the 
latter  part  of  it.  Goethe  felt  that  he  had  an- 
other call  than  his  present  one;  after  all  he 
was  not  in  his  right  place  as  minister  of  State. 
His  true  function  in  life  was  to  be  poet,  and 
he  could  not  be  permanently  happy  in  pursu- 
ing a  different  vocation.  His  spare  moments 
only  could  now  be  given  to  the  deepest  neces- 
sity of  his  being,  which  was  literary  crea- 
tion ;  his  Genius  could  not  be  satisfied  except 
by  the  living  sacrifice  of  his  whole  best  self 
to  its  goal.  Hence  his  strongest  aspiration 
and  his  daily  routine  of  work  were  at  odds; 
thus  there  was  a  jar  in  his  life  during  this 
Decennium,  and  especially  during  the  last 
half  of  it,  which  often  was  hopelessly  painful. 
He  was  not  fulfilling  his  mission,  he  was  not 
delivering  the  high  message  which  he  had 


THE  WEIMAR  DECENNIU&.  191 

been  sent  to  proclaim.  The  son  of  the  God  had 
sold  himself  to  perform  all  the  petty  labors 
of  mortality,  in  which  his  divinity  was 
quenched. 

This  discontent  took  chiefly  the  shape  of 
longing  for  Italy  and  for  the  classic  world. 
He  tells  us  that  he  could  not  look  at  a  Latin 
book  without  twinges  of  pain.  He  speaks  of 
"the  physico-moral  ills"  which  at  last  made 
the  Italian  Journey  a  necessity  for  his  soul's 
health.  Thus  he  reached  a  state  of  revolt 
against  Weimar  as  he  did  against  Frankfort, 
and  had  to  move  forth  into  a  new  plane  of  his 
development.  So  at  last  his  institutional 
training  completed  itself,  which  will  not  be 
lost,  and  his  aspiring  Genius,  long  smoth- 
ered in  the  petty  routine  of  a  petty  Court, 
takes  flight  across  the  Alps  to  win  fresh  life 
and  freedom. 

It  should  be  noted  that  his  Autobiography 
stops  short  at  the  start  of  the  Weimar  Decen- 
nium.  Hence  we  have  no  direct  record  of  this 
Epoch  from  the  poet's  pen,  as  we  have  so 
fully  of  the  two  preceding  Epochs.  Of  course 
he  had  nothing  much  to  tell  about  in  the  field 
of  literature,  since  his  Genius  had  fallen  into 
a  state  of  subsidence  during  the  whole  decade. 
Nor  does  he  seem  inclined  to  dwell  upon  the 
real  discipline  which  he  received  from  his 
long  immersion  in  the  business  of  the  State. 


192          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

I. 

Little  Weimar. 

The  explosive,  limit-breaking  Titan  has 
now  to  creep  into  a  little  hole  of  a  city  and 
country,  and  to  adjust  himself  to  such  nar- 
row conditions.  At  the  time  of  Goethe's  ar- 
rival, the  city  Weimar  had  about  6,000  in- 
habitants and  the  entire  dukedom  of  Wei- 
mar-Eisenach contained  perhaps  100,000  peo- 
ple. The  land  was  poor,  hilly,  rocky,  not  dis- 
similar to  New  England ;  moreover  the  terri- 
tory was  curiously  scattered  about  over  a 
good  deal  of  space,  as  if  strewn  in  streaks 
and  spots.  It  was  not  huddled  around  one 
capital,  which  the  people  could  easily  reach 
and  support.  So  it  came  that  Weimar,  the 
seat  of  government,  was  small  and  poor  and 
helpless;  if  the  Muse  were  in  search  of 
money  or  even  a  good  living,  that  would  be 
just  the  last  spot  in  all  Germany  where  she 
would  alight.  To  Goethe  very  shuddering 
must  have  been  the  contrast  with  his  Frank- 
fort which  had  wealth,  business  activity,  rich 
surrounding  country,  and  fine  edifices.  The 
best  house  in  Weimar,  the  ducal  palace,  lay 
in  ruins,  having  burnt  down  recently.  Still 
his  Genius  bids  the  young  poet  to  shrink  him- 
self into  this  petty  bottle,  and  there  to  ex- 


LITTLE  WEIMAR.  193 

pand  it  and  himself  into  the  Universe.  Did 
he  do  it !  If  he  had  not,  we  would  not  be  read- 
ing him  and  talking  of  him  today  on  the  oppo- 
site side  of  the  globe,  in  another  hemisphere. 
Already  there  had  been  the  tendency  to 
gather  the  children  of  the  Muses  in  Weimar, 
especially  by  the  former  Duchess,  Anna  Ama- 
lia,  who  secured  Wieland,  a  great  literary 
light  of  that  time,  and  other  smaller  ones,  not 
mentionable  here.  The  reigning  Duke,  her 
son  Karl  August,  showed  the  same  bent  and 
did  the  one  supreme  deed  in  this  line  by  catch- 
ing Goethe,  and  so  to  speak  impounding  him, 
the  wild  fence-breaker.  Then  Goethe  in  his 
turn  develops  this  same  trend  marvelously, 
through  his  conscious  effort,  as  well  as 
through  his  unweeting  personal  magneticism. 
He  had  not  been  in  Weimar  long  and  was 
hardly  yet  firm  in  the  saddle  when  he  began 
to  stir  the  Duke  to  call  Herder  to  be  the  first 
clergyman  of  the  land  and  guardian  of  the 
State's  religion.  For  Goethe  well  remem- 
bered Herder  at  Strassburg  as  the  magician 
who  had  evoked  the  power  of  his  sleeping 
Genius,  and  had  led  him  into  the  creations  of 
his  Frankfort  epoch.  Naturally  the  poet 
thought  that  some  such  deed  could  be  done 
again  at  Weimar.  But  really  Herder  had 
then  imparted  to  his  spiritual  pupil  the  one 
really  pivotal  lesson  which  he  was  able  to 


194  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— P^ART  FIR8T. 

give ;  already  Goethe  had  outgrown  him  and 
was  in  a  new  stage  of  development.  The  re- 
sult was  that  the  old  relation  could  not  be  re- 
peated; at  Strassburg  for  once  it  had  been 
and  for  all.  Still  Herder  was  a  man  of  great 
talent  in  his  line,  and  he  filled  an  important, 
though  subordinate  place  on  the  Weimar 
Parnassus.  Seeing  this  and  fully  satisfied  of 
his  supremacy,  he  grew  discontented  and 
lived  his  life  in  the  mood  of  the  sulking  hero. 
Moreover  he  passed  into  a  state  of  mental 
crystallization;  he  did  not  evolve,  and  could 
not  understand  Goethe 's  stages  of  evolution, 
except  the  first  in  which  he  was  the  chief 
mediating  factor,  the  new  soul's  very  obstet- 
rician. Hence  he,  coddled  by  wife,  became 
the  towering  example  of  the  unappreciated 
genius  among  the  Weimar  mountain  peaks. 
Goethe  took  untold  trouble  in  satisfying  his 
just  claims,  as  well  as  in  soothing  his  ever- 
ruffled  temper,  which  would  easily  quill  itself 
like  the  fretful  porcupine.  And  that  wife  of 
his,  Caroline,  sharp-witted  and  sharper- 
tongued,  Goethe  seems  to  have  actually  feared 
when  she  would  sheer  off  into  her  tantrums, 
and  start  up  her  cannonade  of  grievances. 
Still  Herder  had  the  remnant  of  good  sense 
to  stick  to  his  place,  for  he  was  a  greater  man 
under  Goethe's  wing  than  he  could  have  been 
anywhere  else. 


LITTLE  WEIMAR.  195 

So  our  greatest  Genius  gathers  his  group 
of  geniuses,  big  and  little,  troublesome,  jeal- 
ous, and  of  course  not  one  of  them  fully  ap- 
preciated. Still  they  remained  circling  about 
the  central  sun,  and  receiving  its  light;  they 
constitute  a  unique  system,  gazed  at  today  in 
the  literary  Heaven. 

But  there  was  one  set  of  these  sons  of  the 
Muses  whom  Goethe  could  no  longer  endure. 
They  were  his  old  boon  comrades  of  the 
Storm  and  Stress,  defiant  of  all  conventions 
and  of  the  world  ordered.  Seemingly  they 
expected  to  have  another  time  of  poetic  de- 
bauchery under  their  former  leader  and  su- 
preme reveler.  But  great  is  their  disappoint- 
ment. Goethe  has  begun  to  transcend  that 
stage  of  himself  which  now  is  getting  to  be  to 
him  downright  repulsive.  The  Brothers  Stol- 
berg  pass  through  Weimar  on  their  return 
from  Switzerland,  apparently  for  another 
frolic  with  the  former  grandmaster ;  but  they 
soon  leave.  Then  unaccountable  Lenz  ap- 
pears with  his  monkey  tricks  and  violates  all 
propriety;  whereat  Goethe  sends  him  off  with 
a  sticking  epithet  of  " jackass. "  Still  an- 
other of  the  same  ilk,  by  the  name  of  Klinger 
enters,  but  makes  quick  exit.  Thus  we  may 
watch  Goethe  looking  at  the  picture  of  his 
former  Self,  and  dashing  it  to  pieces.  For 
these  boisterous  youths  simply  showed  him 


196          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

what  he  had  been,  and  that  was  enough;  he 
was  getting  conscious  of  his  transition  from 
Frankfort  to  Weimar  and  its  significance. 

Thus  our  poet,  now  turned  statesman,  is 
seeking  to  make  his  little  state  a  work  of  art, 
to  render  it  a  perfect  thing  of  its  kind ;  small 
though  it  be,  yea  the  smallest,  it  can  image 
the  all.  That  is  the  reason,  we  conceive,  why 
Goethe's  artistic  instinct  rightly  turned  him 
away  from  a  large  city  or  country — from  Ber- 
lin, Leipzig,  even  from  his  own  Frankfort, 
which  he  knew  he  could  not  transform  into 
the  world  beautiful,  the  material  was  too  re- 
fractory and  overwhelming.  But  little  Wei- 
mar he  could  handle  and  mould  to  shape,  in- 
ner if  not  outer,  by  the  co-operation  of  its  ab- 
solute sovereign.  So  in  that  wee  nest  on  the 
wee  Ilm,  he  could  lay  the  cosmic  germ  which 
would  reflect  the  Universe. 

Hence  today  we  are  looking  back  at  Wei- 
mar pedestaled  in  its  center  with  Goethe,  as 
a  great  original  work  of  art.  We  think  of  it 
along  with  Athens  in  the  age  of  Pericles,  with 
Florence  in  her  bloom.  No  other  city  of  Eu- 
rope during  that  time  rouses  the  same  in- 
terest. To  be  sure  Weimar  never  had  any 
great  works  of  architecture,  sculpture,  paint- 
ing, any  magnificence.  The  outer  vesture  of 
it  was  poverty-stricken,  almost  shabby  and 
tattered,  and,  though  much  improved  it  still 


LITTLE  WEIMAR.  197 

is  not  dazzling  today.  But  that  magic  struc- 
ture of  its  inner  life,  spanned  by  Goethe's 
days  and  their  works,  is  what  we  are  to  be- 
hold and  to  commune  with.-  A  strange  im- 
mortality it  has  conferred  on  a  crowd  of  peo- 
ple totally  insignificant,  and  doomed  of  them- 
selves to  nameless  perdition;  but  they  lived 
and  moved  about  in  some  petty  corner  of  this 
communal  edifice  and  so  partake  of  its  eter- 
nal transfiguration.  What  a  lot  of  immortal 
nobodies  we  have  to  meet  with  and  to  know  in 
the  itinerary  of  Goethe 's  life !  The  common- 
est clay  his  Promethean  touch  seems  to  trans- 
mute into  little  Gods  and  Goddesses  ever- 
living.  So  we  wander  through  this  Goethe 
gallery  of  temporary  men  and  women  who 
have  been  tranced  by  the  poet's  spell  into  a 
deathless  presence.  Eeally  all  Weimar  is 
Goethe's  poem,  which  in  some  respects  is  his 
most  unique  achievement.  Dante  did  no  such 
thing  with  his  Florence  though  he  has  res- 
cued the  name  of  many  a  petty  sinner  from 
the  fire  of  oblivion  through  his  Hell-fire. 

Accordingly  we  have  to  weigh  carefully  the 
thought  that  Goethe  when  he  settled  down  at 
Weimar  could  not  help  making  it  over  into 
one  of  his  poetical  works,  which  indeed  he 
wrought  at  as  long  as  he  lived.  Thus  it  has  its 
parallelism  with  his  Faust,  also  a  life-long 
work,  which  ended  when  he  ended.  In  like 


198  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM. —PART  FIRST. 

manner  his  whole  career  is  to  be  regarded; 
not  any  single  poem  of  his  is  the  best,  but  his 
total  life-poem.  Of  this  life-poem  his  biog- 
raphy is  essentially  an  interpretation.  A  vast 
multiplicity  of  human  activities  he  showed, 
seemingly  scattering  himself  to  the  four 
points  of  the  compass;  but  in  them  all  he 
was  at  last  doing  the  one  thing:  girdling  his 
world  in  one  all-embracing  life-poem,  whose 
unity  must  be  seen  amid  its  many  diversi- 
ties. Weimar  then  was  a  single  long  poem 
of  his,  the  communal  one,  built  not  of  verses 
but  of  actions. 

We  should  also  note  that  a  second  small 
urban  community  lay  only  a  few  miles  dis- 
tant from  Weimar,  having  nearly  as  many 
inhabitants  but  possessed  of  its  own  central 
institution,  not  political  but  educational.  This 
was  Jena  with  its  University  which  at  this 
time  was  attended  by  some  600  students.  In 
a  number  of  points  it  was  antipodal  to  Wei- 
mar, yet  each  mutually  integrated  the  other. 
The  University  was  naturally  the  home  of 
erudition  and  investigation,  while  in  the 
Temple  of  the  Muses  originality  was  the  di- 
vine token,  especially  literary.  Goethe  cher- 
ished both,  was  the  zealous  supporter  of  both, 
and  took  up  both  into  his  life  and  writ.  Still 
Jena  was  remarkably  fertile  in  movements 
which  Goethe  did  not  care  for  personally. 


LITTLE  WEIMAR.  199 

Philosophy  was  not  to  his  liking,  yet  at  Jena 
under  his  sway  the  three  supreme  philoso- 
phers after  Kant  of  modern  Germany,  Fichte, 
Schelling  and  Hegel  were  professors.  The 
brothers  Schlegel  originated  there  the  famous 
Romantic  movement,  of  which  both  Novalis 
and  Tieck  drank  at  Jena,  but  which  the  clas- 
sic Goethe  always  shunned  as  repugnant  to 
the  right  view  of  Art.  Still  its  vogue  he  rec- 
ognized, and  followed  to  its  depths  without 
its  excesses,  so  that  he  became  the  greatest 
romanticist  of  them  all. 

Such  was  the  real  objective  work  of  the 
poet  during  the  present  Decennium,  \ve  may 
call  it  his  work  of  art,  which  we  still  ideally 
contemplate  in  wonder.  Perhaps  we  can  ac- 
count for  his  lack  of  written  poetry  through 
his  pre-occupation  with  this  one  real  poem, 
of  which  he  is  not  only  author  but  hero.  For 
Weimar  transformed  becomes  his  great  po- 
etic work  of  this  Epoch,  and  so  he  could  write 
none  other.  Undoubtedly  he  was  building  in 
himself  anew  the  transmitted  order  of  the 
little  State,  but  at  the  same  time  he  rebuilt 
the  social  world  there,  as  a  kind  of  ideal 
which  we  study  in  its  little  details,  otherwise 
insignificant,  and  seek  to  fathom  and  make 
our  own. 

Goethe  like  every  true  poet  is  a  symbol- 
maker  essentially,  filling  every  particular 


200          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

which  he  touches  with  a  universal  content, 
with  a  gleam  of  the  All.  Not  only  in  his  writ- 
ings but  likewise  in  his  deeds  we  trace  his 
symbolic  power.  He  could  not  help  acting 
symbols,  so  that  there  is  a  poetry  in  his  life 
as  well  as  in  his  word;  in  fact  the  two  are 
necessary  counterparts,  and  belong  together. 
So  it  can  well  be  said  that  Goethe  transfig- 
ured Weimar  into  a  symbol,  elevating  the  lit- 
tle unimportant  speck  to  an  universal  inter- 
est and  worth  seemingly  for  all  time.  Thus  it 
comes  that  he  put  such  stress  upon  the  sym- 
bol especially  in  his  older  days,  feeling  it  to 
express  the  very  essence  of  his  Genius.  More- 
over we  may  here  add  that  not  only  his  writ- 
ten but  also  his  acted  works  constitute  the 
total  poem  of  his  life,  which  is  to  be  conceived 
and  set  forth  as  one  vast  symbol  whereby  he 
as  individual  Self  becomes  the  image  and  as 
it  were  the  incarnation  of  the  All-Self.  In 
other  words  his  particular  biography  is  to  be 
grasped  as  a  symbol  in  which  is  seen  the  soul 
of  all  biography,  and  thus  images  Universal 
Biography,  which  we  have  already  character- 
ized in  its  deepest  sense  as  the  Biography  of 
the  Universe.  For  to  our  mind  this  Universe 
is  not  merely  dead  matter  or  blind  force,  or 
even  unconscious  life,  though  it  has  all  these 
too,  but  a  conscious  Self  in  its  full  entirety. 


LITTLE  WEIMAR'S  RULER.  201 

. 

II. 

Little  Weimar's  Ruler. 

With  the  small  sovereign  there  is  the  same 
problem  as  with  the  small  realm :  can  he,  di- 
minutive as  he  is  among  the  throngs  of  Ger- 
man princes,  be  made  the  bearer  of  the  true 
greatness  of  the  ruler!  Goethe  himself  calls 
him  small  in  an  oft-cited  epigram :  ' '  Among 
Germany's  rulers  mine  is  certainly  small," 
whereupon  follows  a  neatly-turned  compli- 
ment to  his  Duke.  In  other  words  Karl  Au- 
gust, a  mere  unformed  stripling  of  eighteen 
when  the  poet  arrived  at  Weimar  was  to  be 
moulded  by  him  into  the  sovereign  as  a  work 
of  art.  Goethe  trained  him  and  kept  him  un- 
der training,  yet  with  subtle  tact  and  unfail- 
ing affection.  The  teacher  concealed  deftly 
his  schooling,  he  would  yield  to  his  pupil  in 
unnecessary  matters  and  go  along  with  him 
in  certain  sports  which  shocked  the  staid  eti- 
quette of  the  old  Weimarians;  but  at  the 
critical  moment  he  spared  not  the  lesson,  usu- 
ally with  effect.  To  be  sure  the  pupil  some- 
times gave  a  squirm,  and  called  his  teacher 
"an  old  tyrant,"  but  always  with  gratitude 
for  his  tyranny. 

Thus  by  a  unique  educative  process  which 
we  can  trace  in  their  mutual  dealings  and  cor- 
respondence, the  poet  helped  to  mould  the  life 


202          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

of  the  ruler  into  a  work  of  art  which  we  also 
contemplate  with  admiration  in  this  Weimar 
Gallery.  And  it  may  be  added  that  Goethe 
shared  in  the  new  educational  tendency  of 
the  time;  he  lived  in  the  age  of  the  greatest 
modern  educators,  Pestalozzi  and  Froebel, 
and  breathed  their  atmosphere,  not  to  speak 
of  lesser  lights  like  Basedow,  of  whom  he  has 
given  a  lively  whimsical  account.  Indeed  his 
Wilhelm  Meister  turns  mainly  on  an  educa- 
tional problem,  and  in  the  second  part  of  this 
novel  he  has  described  an  ideal  school  in 
what  he  calls  the  Pedagogic  Province.  But 
we  come  back  to  the  fact  that  his  greatest 
work  in  this  sphere  \vas  the  transformation 
of  his  ruler 's  life-rule  into  a  poem,  in  which 
the  small  reflects  the  all. 

Still  Karl  August  was  not  merely  clay  in 
the  hands  of  the  potter ;  he  had  a  strong  char- 
acter, a  born  love  of  the  ever-better,  and  a 
princely- magnanimity ;  yet  his  supreme  talent 
as  absolute  Prince  lay  in  his  capacity  to  take 
such  a  training,  to  appreciate  it,  and  to  cling 
to  it  as  a  sort  of  ideal  in  life.  No  sooner  had 
Goethe  come  to  Weimar  than  the  young 
Duke's  transcendent  effort  was  to  fix  the 
wanderer  to  the  spot  and  to  set  him  to  work. 
Accordingly  after  some  wary  months  of  mu- 
tual testing  between  the  two  spirits,  the  poet 
and  the  sovereign,  Goethe  is  appointed  Privy 


. 

LITTLE  WEIMAR'S  RULER.  203 

Councilor  with  seat  and  vote  in  Council, 
whereto  is  added  1200  thalers  yearly  salary. 
This  was  done  by  the  Duke  against  the  oppo- 
sition of  all  the  old  officialdom  of  the  Duchy, 
backed  by  their  friends  and  all  the  gossips  of 
the  town.  Only  the  absolute  power  of  the 
young  ruler  carried  it  through.  Karl  August 
must  have  f  oref  elt  what  could  be  done  by  such 
a  man  in  little  Weimar.  It  was  indeed  a  dar- 
ing, even  risky  stroke.  But  let  the  fact  be 
noted :  the  artist  as  statesman  here  starts  up- 
on his  long  arduous  toil  of  transforming  that 
little  world  into  the  fair  shape  in  which  we 
may  now  contemplate  it  enshrined  in  beauti- 
ful words  and  deeds. 

Distinctively  the  Weimar  Decennium  now 
opens,  during  which  Goethe  not  only  trains 
but  gets  training  himself.  He  has  henceforth 
to  administer  the  institution  against  which  he 
once  launched  his  poetic  protest ;  indeed  just 
this  world  of  order  is  what  he  has  to  poetize 
along  with  himself  the  poet.  His  new  voca- 
tion with  its  business  he  is  to  turn  to  art. 
Even  the  court  frivolities,  its  masques,  its 
festivals,  its  dramatic  trifles  he  will  seize  up- 
on as  a  vehicle  for  manifesting  the  beautiful. 
Every  detail  that  he  touches  he  strives  to 
bring  to  its  universal  consecration,  often  with 
small  result.  The  material  was  too  fragile; 
out  of  mere  gossamers  he  could  not  weave 


204          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

lasting  solid  works,  time-defying.  Still  these 
flimsy  court  spectacles  have  their  meaning  for 
him  and  also  for  Weimar. 

But  the  time  comes  when  he  feels  the  in- 
anity of  such  evanescent  literary  work;  his 
Genius  begins  to  cry  out  to  him  to  produce 
something  worthy  of  itself.  Moreover  for 
ten  years  and  longer  he  has  taken  his  institu- 
tional discipline;  he  is  no  more  the  Titan, 
but  he  still  is  the  poet.  So  he  gets  ready  to 
break  out  of  the  Weimar  Decennium,  and  fly 
to  the  Southern  art-world  for  restoration. 

Still  it  must  be  added  that  the  character  of 
Karl  August  has  its  negative  strain.  He  was 
married  to  a  high-spirited,  eminently  worthy, 
though  somewhat  precise  Duchess,  while  he 
was  inclined  to  range  freely  in  the  realms  of 
indulgence  outside  of  his  domestic  bond. 
Hence  arose  trouble  enough  between  the  pair, 
in  which  Goethe  had  to  be  the  intercessor  and 
reconciler,  yea  the  reprover  of  the  Duke  who 
well  might  answer  his  moralizer :  Are  not  you 
doing  the  same  thing!  Goethe  as  Phileros 
was  not  the  best  defender  of  Ethics  in  its  con- 
flict with  love.  Still  he  performed  his  part 
with  such  tactful  diplomacy  that  he  prevented 
any  serious  rupture.  These  were  some  of  the 
secrets  which  he  did  not  and  could  not  tell  in 
his  Autobiography,  but  which  cannot  be 
wholly  passed  over  in  his  life-poem. 


.4- 
FRAU  VON  STEIN.  205 


III. 

Fran  Von  Stein. 

Thus  we  shall  retain  her  Teutonic  designa- 
tion which  has  already  crept  into  numerous 
languages,  borne  by  the  fame  of  Goethe,  who 
during  this  whole  Weimar  Decennium  is 
bound  to  her  by  the  deepest  tie  of  his  Nature, 
that  of  Love.  Here  then  rises  to  surface  that 
strand  o.f  his  inner  life  which  has  been  so 
prominent  in  every  epoch  of  his  career  hith- 
erto— at  Frankfort,  at  Strassburg,  at  Leip- 
zig, and  still  before  this  last,  in  the  first  turn 
of  adolescence.  And  so  it  will  continue  here- 
after. Goethe's  supereminent  part  in  this 
earthly  existence  of  ours,  we  repeat,  was  that 
of  lover,  aye  the  lover  of  Love  herself  em- 
bodied in  many  fair  forms  flitting  before  him 
through  all  his  days,  which  he  would  unfail- 
ingly seek  to  catch  and  to  trance  into  poetic 
shape.  So  we  are  to  take  him  up  in  this  role 
of  Phileros,  as  we  have  sought  to  personal- 
ize it. 

Before  he  had  come  to  Weimar,  during 
his  journey  to  Switzerland,  Goethe  had  seen 
her  picture  in  silhouette;  he  picked  it  out 
among  ten  others  and  wrote  beneath  it :  '  'It 
would  be  a  glorious  view  to  see  how  the  world 
mirrors  itself  in  this  soul.  She  sees  the 


206  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

world  as  it  is,  and  yet  through  the  medium  of 
love."  Here  he  gives  a  strange  anticipation 
of  his  own  future  and  hers,  as  well  as  the 
coming  bond  between  them.  He  feels  in  ad- 
vance that  the  soul  peering  out  behind  such 
a  face  has  its  view  of  the  universe  as  created 
by  love  and  understood  by  love.  He  also  de- 
clares that  the  sight  of  that  face  surging 
through  his  imagination  robbed  him  of  sleep 
for  three  nights.  Such  is  the  prelude  of  Phi- 
leros  to  his  longest  and  most  unique  affair  of 
heart,  and,  as  he  says,  the  most  formative. 
Also  we  may  note  here  the  strain  of  proph- 
ecy characteristic  of  Goethe ;  he  deemed  him- 
self a  poetic  somnambulist,  seeing  with  a  kind 
of  second  sight,  or  super-sense,  his  predes- 
tined lot. 

Who  was  this  woman  who  had  such  a  power 
of  projecting  her  soul  through  space  into 
Goethe's  very  genius  and  setting  it  into  vio- 
lent tumult  simply  from  the  meagre  outline 
of  a  silhouetted  visage?  Charlotte  Von 
Schardt  (Lotte's  name  again)  was  born  at 
Weimar  in  1742,  married  the  Duke's  Master 
of  Horse,  Friedrich  Von  Stein,  in  her  twenty- 
second  year;  both  her  father  and  her  hus- 
band were  officials  of  the  Court,  and  she  her- 
self was  a  lady  in  attendance  on  the  Duchess 
Amalia.  Thus  her  outer  social  life  had 
passed  at  Court  whose  forms,  ceremonies, 


FRAU  VON  STEIN.  207 

proprieties*  and  prejudices  she  knew  thor- 
oughly, and  indeed  they  were  ingrown  into 
her  being.  This  is  particularly  the  side  of 
her  character  which  the  unconventional  Goe- 
the shocks  at  first,  and  then  he  starts  adopt- 
ing it.  Thus  she  becomes  the  trainer  of  the 
Titan  out  of  his  Titanism,  especially  out  of 
his  Titanic  love.  She  stimulates  Phileros  to 
the  highest  point  of  intensity,  and  then  puts 
him  under  her  discipline  and  formalism.  A 
very  needful  school  for  him  and  which  none 
of  his  former  young  maidens  could  have  ac- 
complished— he  was  too  strong  and  head- 
strong for  their  restraints. 

Naturally  one  asks:  What  had  been  the 
previous  discipline  of  the  woman  for  such  a 
task?  We  read  that  her  marriage  was  love- 
less, quite  neutral,  though  not  poisonous ; 
seemingly  a  made-up  matter  of  convenience, 
when  the  all-conquering  Phileros  appears  on 
the  scene.  She  had  borne  already  seven 
children  in  nine  years,  of  whom  four  had 
wilted  away  in  infancy,  and  three  remained, 
all  boys.  Certainly  in  these  facts  lies  the 
most  tremendous  discipline  which  woman- 
hood can  undergo,  the  discipline  of  mater- 
nity in  just  about  the  hardest  form  it  can  as- 
sume. She  is  indeed  performing  the  abso- 
lute duty  of  her  sex,  which  is  to  be  mother.of 
her  race,  and  certainly  she  has  not  shrunk 


208  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

from  its  fulfilment.  To  bear  seven  children 
in  nine  years  to  the  man  she  loves  not,  yet  to 
keep  fidelity  to  the  husband,  coupled  with  the 
sense  of  her  highest  obligation — that  is  what 
may  be  deemed  the  hardest  test  of  woman, 
the  supreme  discipline  of  maternity.  One 
may  well  see  this  awful  trial  and  its  mastery 
in  her  portrait  still,  with  its  depth  of  sorrow 
reaching  to  the  soul's  bottom,  and  there  ac- 
cepted if  not  overcome.  No  wonder  that  Goe- 
the at  the  view  of  such  a  picture  sympathet- 
ically fathomed  its  deepest  purport,  and 
longed  to  see  "how  the  world  mirrored  itself 
in  this  soul,"  for  beyond  all  his  experience 
with  women — and  Phileros  had  known  a  good 
deal  already — here  was  a  new  and  deeper 
message  from  the  woman-soul  than  any  he 
had  yet  heard  or  seen,  not  excepting  that  of 
his  own  dear  mother.  Thus  the  poet  gets  to 
glimpse  the  function  of  womanhood  at  the 
very  fountain  of  its  being.  He  is  brought  in- 
to the  presence  of  the  original  Eve  of  crea- 
tion. 

But  now  having  given  expression  and  full 
validity  to  this  eternal  element  in  Frau  Von 
Stein,  she  has  with  it  curiously  commingled 
something  quite  opposite,  a  very  finite  ele- 
ment of  gossip,  petty  jealousy,  a  feminine 
tendency  to  nag  the  man  she  loves,  and  be- 
cause she  loves  him.  How  many  apologies 


FRAU  VON  STEIN.  209 

has  he  to  make,  defences,  explanations,  em- 
broidered with  tenderest  words  of  devotion! 
All  for  some  little  impropriety  or  neglect  or 
pleasantry  not  rightly  timed  or  tuned  ac- 
cording to  her  sense  of  what  befits  such  a 
man.  Later  we  shall  see  this  strain  of  her 
character  rise  to  the  surface  and  jet  forth 
stinging  vitriolic  sarcasm  and  disparagement 
against  her  former  lover  when  he  has  taken 
unto  himself  another  woman,  she  in  the  mean 
time  having  become  a  widow. 

Here  it  may  be  well  to  note  of  this  impor- 
tant woman  that  her  long  life  running  par- 
allel to  Goethe's,  shows  three  distinct  stages 
of  development,  if  we  pass  over  her  unmar- 
ried days  of  which  we  know  nothing  worth 
knowing.  First  is  the  mentioned  stage  of  ma- 
ternal consecration,  quite  at  the  close  of 
which  she  meets  Goethe  with  whose  acquaint- 
ance opens  the  second  stage,  starting  a  new 
and  very  distinct  change  in  her  disposition. 
The  following  passage  spoken  by  a  charac- 
ter in  a  little  drama  of  Goethe's,  is  supposed 
to  be  taken  literally  from  one  of  her  letters : 
* i  The  world  again  becomes  dear  to  me,  though 
I  had  flung  it  off — dear  through  you.  My 
heart  indeed  reproaches  me ;  I  feel  that  I  am 
preparing  troubles  for  you  and  myself.  Six 
months  ago  I  was  ready  to  die,  but  now  I  am 
not."  This  touches  upon  another  trait  of 


210  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

Frau  Von  Stein 's  character :  the  struggle  be- 
tween her  conscience  and  her  love,  to  which 
is  allied  her  premonition  of  some  penalty  for 
what  she  acts  and  feels.  And  the  final  stroke 
came,  her  lover  quit  her  for  one  whom  she 
deemed  far  inferior  to  herself.  Therewith 
began  her  third  stage,  a  long  spell  of  sullen- 
ness  and  spiteful  utterances  against  the  man 
of  her  heart,  lasting  nearly  forty  years — she 
died  in  1827.  Her  letters  during  this  time 
have  been  published,  or  extracts  from  them 
(Diintzer,  Charlotte  Von  Stein),  and  they 
make  a  running  commentary  on  Goethe's 
works  and  his  actions  for  nearly  the  entire 
stretch  of  his  two  great  Periods,  as  we  shall 
hereafter  mark  them  out.  She  becomes  the 
Weimar  Cassandra,  uttering  doomful  words 
over  the  country's  greatest  man — venomous 
prophecies  but  often  true  and  fulfilled  to  the 
letter.  Thus  we  may  bring  before  ourselves 
the  three  grand  sweeps  of  her  life — the  last 
of  which  she  sat  in  her  cottage  not  far  from 
Goethe's  own  door,  and  in  look  and  word 
threw  upon  his  wife,  his  children  and  him- 
self the  venom  fabled  of  the  basilisk. 

Goethe's  letters  to  Frau  Von  Stein  have 
been  edited  and  published — more  than  1500 
of  them — the  edition  under  my  eye  numbers 
them  at  1775,  of  which  more  than  two  hun- 
dred belong  after  his  breach.  These  letters 


FRAU  VON  STEIN.  211 

may  be  regarded  a  continuation  of  his  Auto- 
biography (Dichtung  und  Wahrheit)  not  on 
all  its  lines,  but  on  the  main  one,  that  of 
Phileros.  As  she  was  still  living  and  a  near 
neighbor,  it  was  probably  in  part  the  regard 
for  her  feelings  and  memories,  which  made 
him  stop  his  account  of  his  life  at  the  Weimar 
Decennium.  Goethe  knew  of  these  letters  and 
was  willing  to  let  them  tell  their  own  story; 
indeed  they  are  his  chief  literary  work  of  art 
during  this  Epoch.  He  re-enacts  in  reality 
his  Werther  romance,  though  this  too  was 
based  upon  fact.  He  becomes  enthralled  to 
a  woman  belonging  to  another;  not  only  be- 
trothed is  she,  but  married  and  a  mother 
many  times ;  and  so  we  have  an  actual  Wer- 
therian  situation  of  hopeless  love,  and  like 
Werther,  written  in  letters  full  of  emotion. 
Goethe  himself  recognized  the  parallel  and 
poetized  it  somewhat  thus : 

What  I  then  dreamed  and  suffered, 
Now  I  experience  awake. 

So  we  have  in  these  Letters  the  immediate, 
often  daily  gushes  of  the  heart,  the  primal 
elements  of  his  love-life  during  this  time,  not 
wrought  over  by  the  ageing  man  into  his 
more  artificial  Autobiography,  nor  transfig- 
ured to  alien  artistic  shapes  as  in  his  Tasso, 
which  a  French  critic  pronounced  an  intensi- 


212  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

fied  Werther,  nor  having  the  youthful  ebul- 
liency of  his  first  novel,  which  starts  the 
evolving  series.  Goethe  through  some  ten 
years  is  called  upon  to  endure  the  pangs 
which  caused  his  first  hero  to  solve  his  prob- 
lem by  suicide*  But  now  he  cannot  save  him- 
self by  killing  off  his  hero  who  is  none  other 
than  just  his  own  person.  The  tragic  act  of 
that  Titanic  epoch  must  be  met  and  undone, 
cries  his  destiny :  you  are  to  solve  a  more  des- 
perate case  of  impossible  love,  and  live  and 
pass  to  a  new  stage  of  your  career.  So  the 
two  Lottes,  she  of  Frankfort  (or  Wetzlar) 
and  of  Weimar  are  coupled  not  only  in  name 
but  in  a  unique  immortality  given  them  by  the 
love  of  a  poet.  To  be  sure  there  is  too  much 
repetition  of  tiny  tendernesses,  honeyed  lit- 
tle phrases  and  petty  chores — a  prolonged 
iteration  of  candied  humdrum,  till  one  lays 
aside  the  excess  of  sweetmeats. 

But  it  is  the  eyes  of  Frau  Von  Stein  which 
proclaim  her  chief  evangel  from  within — 
those  unusually  large,  melting,  lustrous  eyes 
swimming  in  a  tidal  sea  of  their  own  and 
overflowing  with  an  all-motherly  tenderness 
appeared  to  tap  and  ray  out  into  sunlight  the 
very  sources  of  creation.  So  she  could  start 
that  prophetic  anticipative  throb  in  Goethe. 
Yet  she  undergoes  transformation  through 
him  as  well ;  one  observer  notices  how  she  be- 


.4- 
FRAU  VON  STEIN.  213 

gins  to  get  like  Goethe,  in  speech  and  tone  and 
even  physiognomy.  The  poet  confesses  that 
she  knew  " every  trait  of  my  nature/'  that 
she  could  "read  me  with  a  look,"  that  she 
"trickled  into  my  hot  blood  drops  of  re- 
straint," and  was  able  to  stem  "my  wild 
erratic  course." 

Still  there  was  a  slow  but  rounded  evolu- 
tion in  this  decennial  companionship.  At  first 
she  would  mother  him  in  the  way  of  right 
courtly  manners,  teach  him  good  behavior, 
him  the  defiant  stormer  against  all  conven- 
tions. This  he  feels  now  to  be  his  deeper 
call:  to  make  himself  harmonious  with  the 
order  about  him.  So  he  sings  of  her  as  the 
one  "who  gives  me  back  more  purified  the 
purest  of  my  impulses."  She  had  read  his 
early  romance  and  identifies  him,  saying  "I 
know  not  whether  he  or  Werther  is  talking 
to  me. ' '  But  with  a  few  years  the  inner  bond 
becomes  stronger,  yea,  indissoluble  forever, 
though  still  impossible  to  realize.  Not  only 
heart  but  intellect  grew  together,  they  stud- 
ied in  common  Natural  Science,  Spinoza's 
philosophy,  as  well  as  literature,  but  her  de- 
mand for  personal  fidelity  began  to  be  more 
exacting,  yea  tyrannical;  her  jealousies  shot 
bitter  reproaches  with  imperious  haughti- 
ness. Goethe  still  took  a  free  range  with  the 
ladies  in  accord  with  his  old  habits,  particu- 


214  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

larly  was  she  jealous  of  Corona  Schroter, 
who  had  not  the  legal  impediment  of  mar- 
riage, nor  the  handicap  of  age,  children,  hus- 
band. Indeed  Goethe  was  already  known  to 
have  had  too  many  transcended  loves  to  be 
without  suspicion.  Thus  the  fact  became 
ever  present  to  him  and  to  her:  she  could 
not  give  like  for  like,  though  she  demanded 
his  freedom  for  her  unfreedom.  The  coun- 
tercurrent  could  not  help  setting  in:  he  was 
a  hopeless  slave  without  any  reward  for  his 
slavery;  the  supreme  fruition  of  love  in  the 
Family  could  not  take  place,  but  it  became 
his  damnation  to  stay  in  that  inner  grinding 
hell  of  blasted  hopes,  ever  being  re-born  only 
to  be  accursed.  Hence  we  begin  to  trace  in 
the  later  letters  of  the  Decennium  the  care- 
fully hidden  yet  growing  resolution  of  Goe- 
the to  get  rid  of  his  bondage  which  had  de- 
veloped into  an  Inferno  out  of  a  former  Par- 
adise. 

Still  he  covers  up  his  changing  soul  with  all 
the  more  profuse  display  of  emotional  fire- 
works. Even  more  wonderful  and  intricate 
became  his  arabesques  of  imagery — no  won- 
der that  she  began  to  suspect  their  full  sin- 
cerity. Moreover  she  had  so  encased  Goe- 
the in  her  proprieties  that  he  had  lost  touch 
with  men,  had  become  stiff,  formal,  silent, 
quite  the  opposite  of  the  genial  Titan  he 


FRAU  VON  STEIN.  215 

once  was.-  Therewith  too  he  had  lost  his 
power  of  creativity;  his  great  poetic  plans 
Faust,  Meister,  Tasso,  Iphigenia,  would  not 
unfold  and  organize  themselves  in  his  pres- 
ent condition  of  servitude.  His  Genius 
seemed  bottled  up,  helpless  and  hopeless, 
hardly  alive  but  for  some  flutterings  brief 
and  uncertain.  He  began  to  long  for  death, 
he  might  after  all  enact  his  Werther  to  the 
last  deed  of  suicide — such  an  existence  could 
not  continue.  Love  the  impossible  was 
slowly  murdering  him  in  the  presence  of  the 
Stein — so  he  must  flee.  When  at  Rome  look-- 
ing backwards,  he  writes  to  her  still:  "Alas! 
dear  Lotte,  you  do  not  know  what  violence  I 
did,  and  am  still  doing  to  myself,  and  the 
thought  not  to  possess  you  is  what  grinds 
and  consumes  me  from  the  foundation,  let  mo 
construe  it  as  I  may." 

So  he  must  flee  for  self  recovery  along  all 
his  broken  lines — love,  poetry,  life  itself. 
Weimar  must  be  left  behind,  Phileros  has 
finished  another  stage  of  his  life's  appren- 
ticeship and  can  wait  no  longer  without  los- 
ing his  goal.  But  how  about  Frau  Von  Stein? 
She  also  passes  into  a  new  development,  as 
already  set  forth;  from  being  the  poet's  very 
Muse,  she  changes  into  the  vengeful  sybil  of 
his  fate,  his  mirroring  oracle  of  ill  to  come 
for  ill  done  by  him;  re-enacting  Cassandra, 


216  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

Ilium's  frenzied  but  true  prophetess  of  mis- 
fortunes sent  from  the  Gods  for  its  misdeeds. 
She  belongs  to  quite  the  whole  qourse  of  his 
life,  being  to  him  the  voice,  often  the  vindic- 
tive voice  of  retribution,  once  angelic  in  love, 
now  demoniac  in  hate,  not  without  cause. 
Thus  she  remains  a  very  significant  charac- 
ter in  his  evolution,  a  character,  however, 
which  he  has  not  portrayed,  but  which  he 
must  have  often  heard  in  the  depths  of  his 
soul  responsively.  Once  the  nurse  of  his  good 
genius,  she  is  transformed  into  the  scourge 
of  his  evil  genius.  So  she  has  her  necessary 
place  in  his  complete  life-poem,  embracing 
the  total  Goethe  unwritten  as  well  as  written. 
During  these  ten  years,  what  about  the  hus- 
band, Herr  Stallmeister  Von  Stein?  One  can- 
not help  having  some  curiosity  concerning 
his  part  in  the  affair.  For  after  all  we  are 
human  and  must  need  ask,  what  would  I  have 
done  were  I  in  his  place!  It  seems  that  he 
was  not  jealous,  but  accepted  the  relation 
with  a  certain  nonchalance  if  not  approval. 
He  attended  to  his  business  with  horses  and 
cattle,  also  he  operated  a  factory,  letting  his 
own  boys  alone,  and  leaving  the  superintend- 
ance  of  their  education  chiefly  to  Goethe,  who 
with  a  paternal  affection  adopted  one  of 
them,  little  Fritz.  Perhaps  wre  have  the  right 
to  hear  the  accommodating  husband  say  to 


FRAU  VON  STEIN.   *  217 

his  wife:  "You  deserve  love  which  I  have 
not  given,  cannot  give  because  I  have  it  not. 
I  see  you  are  not  happy  with  me,  but  faith- 
ful. So  find  your  happiness  where  you  may, 
but  leave  to  me,  phlegmatic  as  I  am,  my  pipe 
and  beer  and  stable." 

The  chief  function  of  Frau  Von  Stein,  then, 
is  to  subordinate  the  wild  poet  from  Frank- 
fort to  order,  law,  and  outward  convention, 
at  present  especially  useful  to  him  as  a  court 
official.  But  of  course  such  training,  only  pos- 
sible to  him  through  love,  goes  far  deeper 
than  mere  ceremony ;  it  brings  him  to  re-con- 
struct not  only  externally  in  form  but  inter- 
nally in  spirit  the  whole  existent  institutional 
world,  now  his  prime  need  both  as  poet  and  as 
man.  Again  the  woman  bears  a  creative  part 
in  Goethe 's  total  development,  and  spurs  him 
to  his  highest  production. 

So  Phileros  is  not  going  to  be  left  behind 
at  Frankfort  for  the  young  girls  but  passes 
with  the  poet  to  Weimar,  as  the  most  essen- 
tial factor  of  his  personality.  There  he  en- 
ters upon  a  new  experience  of  his  love-life,  his 
attachment  to  an  .older  wonran,  who  in  her 
tactful  way  mothered  him,  and  through  her 
maternal  power  won  his  abiding  devotion.  It 
is  not  the  first  nor  the  last  time  that  the  el- 
derly matron  enthralls  the  more  youthful 
lover.  Thus  Goethe  was  tethered  for  years 


218  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

with  a  love  impossible  of  fruition  at  the  age 
fittest  and  most  natural  for  wedlock,  and 
seemingly  lost  the  opportune  time  for  rightly 
entering  the  family. 

It  is  to  be  expected  that  anti-Phileros  has 
not  been  silent  about  this  episode  of  the 
greatest  poet-lover  that  ever  lived.  Voices 
of  protesting  women  can  be  heard  censuring 
the  formation  of  such  a  tie  in  the  first  place, 
then  blaming  the  man  for  breaking  it  off  so 
heartlessly.  What  a  hubbub  of  opinions  vi- 
tuperating and  defending  both  parties  to  the 
affair!  Very  suggestive  becomes  the  attack 
of  the  vowed  celibate  at  this  point,  assailing 
all  love  and  lovers  in  their  supreme  human 
representative,  Goethe.  For  such  a  celibate 
is  also  a  representative  voicing  a  vast  mass 
of  peoples,  faiths,  and  institutions.  The  Jes- 
uit Pater  recognizes  fully  that  love  is  the 
central  creative  force  of  all  Goethe's  poetry, 
as  well  as  of  his  life.  (Baumgartner's  Goe- 
the, I.  279,  etc.)  Phileros  is  slashed  right  and 
left  by  the  keen  satire  of  his  sacerdotal  foe, 
who  is  both  strong-worded  and  well-informed. 
In  the  outcome  we  hear  the  damnatory  judg- 
ment of  the  priest:  The  poet  sought  in  the 
love  of  woman  what  God  alone  can  give. 


.4- 
LITERARY  PRODUCTION.  219 


IV. 

Literary  Production. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  literary  writing 
of  Goethe  during  the  Weimar  Decennium 
shows  a  sudden  and  all-round  shrinkage.  To 
every  reader  who  gets  to  the  point  of  seeing* 
and  marking  off  the  various  stages  of  Goe- 
the, this  long  paralysis  of  his  deepest  Genius 
becomes  a  study  of  pivotal  interest  and  con- 
templation. It  seems  as  if  his  sun  of  life 
were  in  lasting  eclipse.  Still  his  creative 
spirit  did  not  die,  it  continued  to  throb  out  at 
intervals  in  little  spurts,  and  underneath  the 
strong  outer  repression  the  fires  kept  smoul- 
dering, if  not  burning.  In  1782,  hence  in  the 
central  part  of  this  Decennium,  he  thus 
speaks  of  his  own  true  vocation,  after  having 
enjoyed  the  rare  luxury  of  composing  a  lit- 
tle bit  of  his  Meister:  "  Properly  I  am  born 
for  a  writer.  When  I  have  written  anything 
well  and  fully  up  to  my  conception  it  gives 
me  a  purer  joy  than  otherwise. "  But  the 
immortal  Apollo  in  him  has  to  serve  out  his 
apprenticeship  to  the  mortal  Admetus,  now 
the  deity's  master. 

We  have  already  given  what  we  deem  the 
inner  necessity  of  this  stage  in  the  evolution 
of  the  poet.  He  must  recover  from  his  re- 


220  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

volt  against  the  established  order;  his  defi- 
ance of  the  Gods  is  no  longer  his  poetic  evan- 
gel but  submission  to  the  law  of  overarching 
Heaven ;  he  can  now  say :  Let  no  mortal  dare 
measure  himself  with  the  Immortals  as  did 
the  Titan.  Human  limitation  becomes  his 
theme  of  verse  under  many  images.  He  lays 
down  in  strong  lines  the  bounds  of  humanity, 
and  actually  celebrates  the  finitude  of  little 
man.  So  he  seems  to  be  squeezing  into  little 
Weimar  and  into  the  numberless  littlenesses 
of  the  life  there ;  the  day  is  indeed  filled  with 
microscopic  duties  which  he  has  to  perform 
or  go  to  the  wall.  How  different  was  the  at- 
titude of  Prometheus,  the  daring  challenger 
of  the  Olympians !  But  now  he  glorifies  the 
Divine  in  his  most  exquisite  verse,  and  exalts 
Godhood  to  the  world's  supremacy  in  many 
a  fresh-wrought  phrase  which  shows  the  new 
insight  at  its  deepest  font.  We  might  say,  if 
the  expression  be  taken  aright,  that  Goeth<3 
got  religion  in  this  Weimar  Epoch;  that  is, 
he  reached  a  religious  world-view,  in  opposi- 
tion to  his  Titanic  protest  against  the  Gods. 
Undoubtedly  he  was  by  nature  susceptible  of 
such  a  godful  impress,  as  the  influence  of 
Fraulein  Von  Klettenberg  showed  at  Frank- 
fort. Yet  he  was  there  the  Heaven-stormer 
in  word  and  deed.  But  Anti-Titanism  is  now 
his  category  practical  and  theoretical,  in  po- 


. 
LITERARY  PRODUCTION.  221 

etry  and  prose;  he  can  sing  it  and  dance  it 
and  stage  it  in  many  a  little  skit  as  well  as 
realize  it  in  the  time's  business,  arabesquing 
it  also  with  life's  philosophy. 

Still  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  just  this 
reaction  against  his  Titanic  power  ham- 
strings his  literary  creation  in  the  large  sense. 
He,  during  these  ten  hibernating  years,  will 
produce  no  Gotz  or  Weriher,  not  even  a  Cla- 
vigo  or  Stella.  His  time  breaks  up  into  little 
moments  for  little  things ;  he  finds  it  impossi- 
ble to  organize  and  complete  any  great  works. 
He  starts  several  and  fiddles  away  at  them 
during  odd  hours;  but  they  remain  frag- 
mentary and  formless,  unfinished  and  unfin- 
ishable.  He  works  at  Tasso,  Iphigenia,  Meis- 
ter,  but  they  stay  merely  blocked  out  and 
half-hewn,  which  he  will  afterward  chisel 
down  into  artistic  shape  under  very  differ- 
ent conditions.  Thus  the  Weimar  Decennium 
has  also  its  torsos,  but  how  diverse  from 
those  of  the  Frankfort  Quadrennium!  Yet 
we  must  remember  that  Goethe  during  this 
Epoch  was  spending  the  whole  energy  of  his 
Genius  upon  another  and  more  universal 
work  of  art,  that  of  the  Institution  itself;  he 
was  laboring  to  transform  Weimar  into  an 
ideal  organic  whole,  into  the  complete  State. 
Not  till  he  had  done  that,  did  he  feel  that  he 
had  won  his  Archimedean  pou  sto,  from  which 


222  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  FIRST. 

he  could  move  the  world.  So  he  submits  for 
ten  long  years  to  the  grinding  drudgery,  to 
the  awful  self-estrangement  from  his  own 
true  calling,  which  often  tears  his  soul  to 
very  shreds  till  he  has  gained  emancipation 
for  himself  and  his  world.  The  social  and  po- 
litical structure  which  he  was  building  was 
far  greater  than  his  Gotz  or  Werther,  and 
sapped  his  total  creative  energy,  still  Titanic 
in  its  way;  no  literary  organism,  poem,  dra- 
ma, novel,  could  be  quite  so  exacting  or  suck 
up  from  the  source  of  creation  so  much  ge- 
netic power. 

He  wrote,  nevertheless,  in  moments  of  re- 
laxation from  his  supreme  task,  many  small 
trifles  to  amuse  the  court  and  the  town,  op- 
erettas, farces,  comical  interludes,  masques. 
These  we  cannot  even  register  here,  still  less 
estimate  them,  in  their  varying  degrees  of 
ephemerality ;  we  may  say,  however,  that 
they  are  frequently  tinged  with  his  present 
reaction  and  satirize  his  own  former  epoch, 
that  of  Storm  and  Stress,  and  sometimes  he 
ridicules  his  own  performances,  Gotz  and 
Werther.  For  instance  in  his  little  drama 
called  the  Triumph  of  Sentimentality  he 
passes  judgment  upon  all  Wertherean  books, 
and  makes  the  judge  shout  out  the  decree: 
"Into  the  fire  with  them!"  So  he  scoffs  at 
his  own  shed  snake-skin  with  an  ironical  self- 


LITERARY  PRODUCTION.  223 

damnation,  which  at  least  hints  his  present 
spirit  at  Weimar.  Still  into  the  same  holo- 
caust the  reader  will  be  inclined  to  fling  also 
these  petty  insects  of  his  ephemeral  muse, 
serving  up  to  them  their  own  negation. 

There  is  one  exception,  however,  to  be 
made  to  this  trial  by  fire ;  or  rather  there  is 
one  kind  of  production  in  this  very  combus- 
tible mass  of  literary  frailty  that  the  fires  of 
time  have  only  brightened  and  tempered  to 
an  indestructible  duration.  This  is  the  lyrical 
output  of  the  Weimar  Decennium.  It  would 
seem  that  the  very  repression  of  his  business 
environment  caused  the  purer  and  more 
spontaneous  upbursts  of  his  imprisoned 
Genius.  We  are  free  to  say  that  these  sud- 
den and  rather  intermittent  gushes  of  writ- 
ten song  are  the  finest  specimens  of  this  sort 
that  European  Literature  possesses.  And 
they  are  altogether  the  best  that  Goethe  pro- 
duced during  his  long  life;  they  express  his 
concentrated  Genius  better  than  any  form  of 
his  art.  If  the  All-Self  ever  uttered  itself  in 
singing  words,  they  are  these.  For  while 
they  appeal  to  very  particular,  even  personal 
emotions,  they  have  the  unique  power  of  an 
universal  consecration,  being  common  to  all 
humanity.  Short  heart-bursts  of  sorrow  and 
joy,  of  love  and  longing,  as  if  heaved  up 
from  the  world-soul.  What  is  the  mystery  of 


224  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

these  lyrics?  Humanity  lias  gotten  a  voice 
and  sings  German  through  Goethe.  They 
have  their  own  music  even  when  set  to  notes, 
and  the  words  hymn  the  soul's  very  melo- 
dies/ 

An  answer  to  Frederick  the  Great's  criti- 
cism of  German  Literature  and  specially  of 
GotZy  was  written  by  Goethe,  at  Weimar, 
doubtless  with  considerable  vigor.  It  has, 
however,  disappeared,  probably  having  been 
destroyed  by  its  author.  The  fact  is  signifi- 
cant: the  poet  himself  probably  no  longer 
felt  like  defending  his  Titanism.  We  may 
also  suppose  that  his  new  respect  for  author- 
ity caused  him  to  look  with  disfavor  upon  his 
own  defence.  Then  the  Duke  of  Weimar  was 
a  relative  of  the  Prussian  King.  So  his  Wei- 
mar obedience  suppresses  his  Frankfort  re- 
volt in  a  typical  deed. 

His  interest  in  Natural  Science  begins  de- 
cidedly to  be  creative  in  this  Decennium. 
He  discovers  the  intermaxillary  bone,  he 
starts  to  recreate  the  vegetable  kingdom 
from  an  original  type,  and  is  led  to  many  ob- 
servations on  Geology  and  Mineralogy  by 
his  development  of  mining  and  agriculture. 
A  fragment  on  Nature  belonging  to  these 
studies  shows  his  new  conception  of  Nature, 
very  different  from  his  sentimental  efferves- 
cences in  Werther.  Nature  is  now  the  all- 


THE  LONGING  FOR  ITALY.  225 

mothering,  ever-producing  principle,  self- 
generating  without  cease.  "She  has  no 
speech  or  discourse,  but  creates  tongues  and 
hearts  through  which  she  feels  and  speaks. " 
This  hints  of  Goethe's  lyrical  fountain.  Then 
again  he  says,  "Her  crown  is  Love;  only 
through  this  can  you  get  near  her. ' '  He  does 
not  quite  say  how;  but  probably  Love  har- 
monizes the  deepest  dualism  of  Nature, 
whose  ultimate  scope  or  push  is  thus  to- 
ward Love's  unity.  So  Goethe  tries  to  sum- 
mon before  himself  Nature  as  a  whole. 


V. 

The  Longing  for  Italy. 

Especially  through  the  last  half  of  the  Wei- 
mar Decennium  we  find  traces  in  Goethe  of 
a  deep  discontent  with  his  present  lot.  He 
feels  that  he  has  fulfilled  largely  his  mission 
in  bringing  Weimar  up  to  his  ideal  of  a 
State.  He  had  also  trained  those  who  could 
take  his  place  in  its  administration.  He  has 
risen  to  the  point  of  having  made  himself  un- 
necessary, at  least  for  a  time.  His  pupil,  the 
Duke,  after  a  ten  years'  education,  he  deems 
to  have  graduated.  This  is  well  indicated  by 
a  letter  written  by  him  in  1786  to  Karl  Au- 
gust: "Your  affairs  at  home  are  in  good  or- 


226  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  FIRST. 

der;  and  I  know  that  you  will  now  allow  me 
to  think  of  myself ;  in  fact  you  have  often  re- 
quested me  to  do  so.  In  the  general  business 
of  the  State  I  certainly  am  not  needed  at 
present,  and  my  special  duties  I  have  so  ar- 
ranged that  they  will  be  fulfilled  without  me ; 
indeed  matters  would  run  on  the  same,  if  I 
were  dead."  This  is  hardly  the  case;  still 
we  can  discern  in  this  act  of  self-obliteration 
that  he  did  wish  to  see  the  validity  of  his  in- 
stitutional deed  tested.  Will  his  Weimar 
work  of  art  persist  in  his  absence — has  he  in 
it  created  something  which  will  outlast  his 
days?  Well,  there  it  stands  yet  and  we  are 
looking  at  now. 

Moreover  he  had  begun  to  feel  the  impos- 
sibility of  continuing  his  relation  with  Frau 
Von  Stein.  It  brought  him  many  a  jar  out- 
side and  inside.  Both  the  Duke  and  the 
Duke's  brother,  Prince  Constantine,  had  their 
affairs  of  passion,  causing  domestic  and  even 
political  troubles  which  Goethe  had  to  har- 
monize. But  how  could  he  plead  with  them 
not  to  do  what  he  was  doing?  Did  he  not 
himself  set  the  example?  Moreover  he  must 
have  had  his  pangs  of  conscience  (as  she  had) 
about  the  matter  else  he  could  hardly  write 

I  am  living  for  her  sake  ever 

For  whose  sake  to  live  I  ought  never. 


THE  LONGING  FOR  ITALY.  227 

But  especially  he  had  commenced  to  see 
that  she  had  come  to  stand  in  the  way  of  the 
full  development  of  his  Genius,  although  she 
may  at  one  time  have  evoked  it  and  nour- 
ished it  by  her  sympathy.  He  realized  that 
her  schooling  was  over  and  that  he  had  paid 
the  fees;  she  was  in  reality  a  transcended 
stage.  Evidently  those  ' '  physico-moral  evils 
which  plagued  me  in  Germany  and  at  last 
made  me  useless  "  are  largely  connected  with 
his  impossible  love  for  Frau  Von  Stein.  This 
obscure  allusion  contained  in  a  letter  of  his 
to  the  Duke  from  Italy  hints  at  least  a  phase 
of  his  secret  malady,  which  stirred  imagina- 
tion but  brought  no  fruition.  To  be  sure  he 
lets  her  down  easily  in  his  letters  with  many 
tender  outlooks  on  the  future  which  are  just 
too  sweet  to  be  true,  and  which  she  herself 
did  not  believe.  But  he  is  resolved  to  break 
the  fatal  chain,  and  so  without  bidding  her 
good-bye  or  even  letting  her  know  his  pur- 
pose, he  slips  off  one  morning  on  the  road  to 
Italy  for  which  he  had  come  to  have  a  long- 
ing of  such  intensity  that  it  too  was  becoming 
a  disease.  He  declares  that  "for  several  years 
I  have  not  dared  look  at  a  Latin  author  or 
regard  anything  that  brought  up  a  picture 
of  Italy  without  suffering  the  most  terrible 
pain.  Had  I  not  taken  the  resolution  which 


228  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

I  now  am  carrying  out,  I  would  have  simply 
gone  to  pieces  and  have  become  incapable  of 
anything. ' ' 

Thus  he  looks  upon  Italy  as  the  sole  sana- 
torium, which  is  to  heal  body  and  soul  of 
their  tortures  and  to  restore  him  to  his  true 
vocation  which  he  has  lost.  Still  he  had  to 
pass  through  and  daringly  wind  up  his  Wei- 
mar Decennium  ere  he  could  take  the  Italian 
dip  of  regeneration.  This  he  knew:  we  have 
already  watched  him  twice  on  St.  Gotthard 
gazing  down  into  the  classic  South,  then 
turning  away  from  the  sight  back  to  his 
Northern  home.  He  had  not  yet  won  his  in- 
stitutional world,  which  he  could  do  only  in 
his  native  land.  But  the  Weimar  training  is 
now  done,  and  again  he  exclaims:  "the  goal 
of  my  most  cherished  longing,  which  filled 
my  whole  soul  with  anguish  was  Italy. " 
There  he  is  to  have  a  fresh  baptism  in  the 
spirit  of  the  World's  History  which  was  en- 
acted on  that  soil  and  uttered  itself  in  the 
noblest  art  and  poetry  as  well  as  in  the  lofti- 
est deed.  His  journey  had  and  still  has  na- 
tional significance;  it  was  another  Teutonic 
migration  to  the  classic  world  to  win  the  an- 
tique ideal  and  to  take  it  up  into  the  North- 
ern culture.  So  Goethe's  longing  for  Italy 
may  well  be  deemed  racial,  which,  starting 
with  the  old  German  barbarians  and  running 


THE  LONGING  FOR  ITALY.  229 

all  through  the  Middle  Ages  down  into  the 
modern  world,  becomes  most  strongly  indi- 
vidualized in  the  greatest  Teutonic  man,  who 
expresses  it  not  only  in  the  highest  literary 
form  of  his  native  tongue,  but  also  in  his 
very  Self,  in  his  heart's  deepest  aspiration. 

No  poem  has  had  a  wider  reading  and  sing- 
ing than  Mignon's  song:  "Knowest  thou 
the  land?"  It  is  the  most  intimate  utterance 
of  the  poet's  longing  for  Italy,  which  he  has 
elevated  into  an  " universal  consecration," 
since  not  only  Teutonia,  but  all  the  rest  of  the 
world  have  appropriated  it.  To  the  same 
time  belongs  the  deeply  internal  poem  called 
"The  Mysteries"  wrhich  is  a  kind  of  repro- 
duction of  medieval  Italy  with  her  religion, 
art  and  nature.  The  stanza  is  derived  from 
Tasso's  ottava  rima,  known  already  to  Goe- 
the's boyhood.  In  like  manner  The  Dedica- 
tion is  strongly  Italianized  in  verse  and  mood 
—a  poem  which  he  prefixed  to  the  edition  of 
his  Works  in  1786,  which  he  got  together  and 
gave  to  a  publisher  before  starting  for  Italy. 
Thus  he  collects  all  his  writings  of  his  First 
Period,  before  making  a  start  into  the  Sec- 
ond Period,  whose  character  he  already  fore- 
feels.  It  is  suggestive  to  observe  that  the 
poet  in  this  one  fact  of  gathering  all  his 
pieces  up  to  date  indicates  the  periodizing  of 
his  own  life.  Indeed  he  already  notes  his  dif- 


230  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

ferent  stages,  or  the  Epochs  of  this  first  great 
Period  as  those  of  Weimar  and  Frankfort. 

But  now  this  Period  has  rounded  itself  out 
to  its  conclusion  in  the  poet's  experience.  Its 
problem  is  the  primal  one  of  the  rational 
man:  What  signifies  to  me  this  transmitted, 
established  social  order  which  has  spiritu- 
ally enveloped  and  largely  controlled  me 
from  birth!  In  its.  Teutonic  manifestation 
Goethe  has  wrought  through  the  problem; 
but  he  is  not  satisfied,  he  feels  the  limit,  he  is 
not  universal,  he  has  not  fully  come  into  his 
total  heritage,  he  is  not  all  that  man  has 
been,  and  cannot  be  at  Weimar  in  his 
bounded  German  environment/  The  pivotal 
psychological  moment  having  arrived,  he 
clutches  it  with  a  sort  of  desperation  and 
bursts  into  another  world. 


VI. 

Retrospect. 

It  is  opportune  at  this  point  to  take  a 
glance  backward  over  the  field  already  trav- 
eled, noting  especially  its  general  outlines. 
The  Weimar  Decennium  now  winds  up,  con- 
taining the  poet 's  deeply  formative  discipline 
during  his  first  stay  at  Weimar.  Too  much 


.*• 

RETROSPECT.  231 

slighted  lias  the  present  significant  Epoch 
been  by  the  biographers  of  Goethe;  indeed 
we  do  not  recall  one  of  them  who  has  even 
understood  the  meaning  of  this  somewhat 
silent  decade  in  the  complete  evolution  of  the 
poet.  To  be  sure  it  is  largely  an  unwritten 
part  of  his  total  life-poem ;  that  is,  he  has  left 
meager  record  of  it  in  prose  and  verse ;  still 
it  is  a  great  canto  of  his  entire  song  written 
and  acted,  and  hence  must  be  set  forth  duly 
to  reveal  the  achievement  of  the  man  in  his 
wholeness.  Fortunately  the  documents,  even 
if  fragmentary,  are  sufficient  for  this  pur- 
pose. 

Let  it  be  noted  again  that  the  present  Ep- 
och bears  in  it  a  return  to  the  First  Epoch, 
and  thus  rounds  out  into  a  totality  of  devel- 
opment the  entire  Pre-Italian  time.  At  the 
start  the  youth  was  in  general  under  the  ex-' 
ternal  sway  of  prescription  against  which  he 
revolted  in  his  Second  Epoch  at  Frankfort, 
that  of  his  young-manhood.  But  at  Weimar 
he  not  only  goes  back  and  takes  up  the  world 
prescribed,  but  reconstructs  it  internally  and 
externally.  Thus  wre  may  observe  a  finished 
cycle  of  his  evolution,  which  we  have  already 
named  a  Period — in  the  present  case  his 
First  Period  made  up  of  the  three  Epochs  al- 
ready designated.  These  taken  together  form 
a  process  which  is  in  its  last  analysis  psych- 


232  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  FIRST. 

ical,  showing  the  three  stages  of  the  one  basic 
thought,  namely  the  poet's  relation  to  the 
transmitted  order  in  which  he  was  born  and 
which  he  had  to  portray.  Or,  to  repeat  des- 
ignations already  specially  employed:  in  the 
First  Epoch  he  Teutonized,  in  the  Second  he 
Titanized,  in  the  Third  he  institutionalized. 

We  should  also  observe  that  with  the  con- 
clusion of  the  Weimar  Decennium  concludes 
a  Period,  the  first  of  the  three  into  which  his 
entire  life-poem  falls.  This  we  have  labeled, 
following  Goethe's  own  authority,  the  Pre- 
Italian  Period,  after  which  he  passes  into  a 
wholly  new  stage  of  his  development.  Thus 
he  keeps  unfolding  into  one  plane  of  life  after 
another  without  cessation  till  he  seems  to 
embrace  a  fuller  human  experience  than  any 
other  recorded  mortal.  Such  is  the  unique 
'interest  of  his  career,  world-inclusive  we  feel 
it  to  be,  not  only  in  extent  but  in  depth. 

Some,  poets  never  get  out  of  the  stage  of 
protest,  revolt,  negation;  they  stay  Titanic  in 
their  denial,  as  did  Byron  and  Shelley.  Both 
died  young,  and  perhaps  did  not  have  time 
enough  to  break  through  their  egg-shell.  Oth- 
ers never  actually  pass  into  this  negative  pe- 
riod, but  remain  innocently  positive,  like 
Longfellow  and  many  more.  Others  again 
take  an  early  dip  in  the  Titanic  brimstone  but 
get  terrified  and  flee  back  to  their  first  inno- 


RETROSPECT.  233 

cent  Paradise,  as  we  may  see  in  Wordsworth 
and  doubtless  in  Coleridge.  Now  it  is  the  pe- 
culiarity of  Goethe  that  he  takes  up  all  stages 
positive  and  negative,  in  his  experience, 
drains  their  contents,  and  then  passes  on  to 
the  next  Epoch  in  his  evolution,  "  without 
haste,  yet  without  rest." 

Thus  we  may  deem  his  the  completest  and 
concretest  human  life ;  he  goes  through  all  its 
grades  without  getting  lodged  in  any  one  of 
them,  being  at  the  same  time  laden  with  every 
sort  of  employment.  Diversified  rays  out  his 
work  in  multitudinous  directions,  yet  unified 
in  one  grand  process  all-comprehending, 
which  it  is  the  fundamental  object  of  his  bi- 
ography to  unfold  and  to  keep  in  view  amid 
the  ever-scattering  inrush  of  details.  So 
from  this  point  of  contemplation,  which  re- 
gards life's  varied  content,  his  biography 
suggests  his  universal  character,  though  the 
latter  is  more  deeply  imaged  in  the  basic 
process  of  his  whole  career,  of  which  process 
we  have  now  concluded  the  First  Period  and 
are  ready  to  pass  to  the  next. 


(1786-1809.) 

By  this  caption  we  seek  to  emphasize  the 
fact  that  Goethe  now  passes  into  the  Second 
Period  of  the  three  which  embrace  his  com- 
plete life.  It  lasts  some  twenty-three  years, 
starting  from  his  push  for  Italy  till  he  begins 
to  turn  back  autobiographically  upon  his 
early  career,  when  he  was  hovering  about  his 
sixtieth  year,  though  this  last  transition  can- 
not be  pinned  down  exactly  to  an  annual 
date,  as  it  was  not  a  sudden  spurt  but  of  slow 

(234) 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  235 

growth.  The  present  Period,  accordingly, 
spans  the  activity  of  the  fully  ripened  middle- 
aged  poet,  from  his  thirty-seventh  year  to  the 
verge  of  old-age,  and  brings  to  fruitage  what 
are  usually  deemed  to  be  his  two  greatest 
books,  his  Meister's  Apprenticeship,  and  his 
First  Part  of  Faust,  the  novel  and  the  poem 
of  the  highest  reach  of  his  Genius.  These 
are  the  towering  summits  above  numerous 
other  lesser  successes  and  also  failures.  Then 
it  should  be  added  that  this  Period  nearly  at 
its  middle  overarches  the  turn  of  the  centur- 
ies from  the  old  one  passing  off  to  the  new 
one  coming  in  with  a  mighty  political  up- 
heaval, the  French  Revolution,  which  lies 
back  of  this  portion  of  Goethe 's  life.  France 
was  already  in  the  first  throes  of  her  coming 
eruption  when  the  poet  turned  his  back  on 
the  North  and  pushed  forward  to  Italy. 

Thus  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  the 
most  distinctive,  most  deeply  trenched  land- 
mark of  Goethe's  entire  career.  Also  it  is, 
let  the  fact  be  noted  again,  the  dividing  line 
which  he  most  often  drew  upon  his  work,  and 
of  which  he  was  himself  profoundly  con- 
-  vinced.  The  Journey  to  Italy  may,  therefore, 
be  said  to  have  been  the  grand  transit  of  his 
Genius  from  one  world  to  another. 

Moreover  it  was  the  fulfilment-  of  a  life- 
time's longing.  Already  as  a  boy  at  home 


236          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

he  heard  much  of  Italy  from  his  fa ther's  lips, 
and  saw  it  in  many  pictured  illustrations; 
also  at  an  early  age  he  began  to  delve  some- 
what in  its  literature.  But  toward  the  last 
of  his  Weimar  years  this  longing  became 
pathological,  and  grew  to  be  a  painful  mal- 
ady, from  which  relief  and  cure  could  only 
be  obtained  by  letting  it  take  its  course.  At 
last  he  heard  the  hour  strike  when  he  must 
make  the  pivotal  turn,  or  give  up  hope  of  his 
future  career,  possibly  even  of  his  existence, 
if  we  may  construe  literally  some  of  his 
words. 

I.  It  was  a  great  act  of  separation,  he  often 
calls  it  a  birth,  like  a  child  taken  from  its 
mother.  He  turned  away  from  home,  folk, 
native  land  and  tongue  to  another  country,  to 
a  strange  people,  speech,  consciousness.  He 
crossed  physically  and  spiritually  the  divid- 
ing line  between  the  new  and  the  old  civili- 
zation, as  he  passed  over  the  Alpine  water- 
shed down  into  Italy,  moving  from  North  to 
South.  Moreover  it  was  a  transition  to  a 
different  religious  environment,  from  a  Prot- 
estant to  a  Catholic  conception  of  man's  des- 
tiny, each  of  them  in  its  way  spirit-moulding 
and  world-building,  even  if  Goethe  in  his  per- 
sonal view  hardly  acknowledged  either.  For 
he  then  was  seeking  to  reach  back  of  Chris- 
tendom in  this  Mediterranean  itinerary,  and 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  237 

somehow  commune  with  and  make  his  own 
antique  Heathendom,  which  started  Euro- 
pean culture  and  once  brought  it  to  its  fair- 
est artistic  flowering.  This  the  poet  would 
appropriate  in  order  to  be  the  complete  man 
by  being  all  that  his  race  had  been. 

So  Goethe  is  now  to  enter  a  strange  world, 
and  therein  to  become  estranged  from  his 
own  and  from  himself.  His  life-long  relation 
to  his  immediate  environment  of  home,  na- 
tion, and  consciousness  he  is  to  break  through 
and  become  a  stranger  in  another  order. 
Such  we  may  call  his  pivotal  act  of  self- 
estrangement  (using  an  educational  term), 
by  which  he  is  to  transcend  his  purely  indi- 
vidual selfhood  and  rise  toward  universality. 
He  quits  his  own  and  makes  himself  the  par- 
ticipant in  another  civilization,  which  also 
belongs  to  the  movement  of  total  humanity. 
For  he  has  come  to  feel  himself  but  a  half- 
man,  and  the  problem  is  how  can  he  rise  to 
be  a  whole  man,  and  take  up  the  full  flower  of 
all  human  development  into  himself.  As  a 
mere  Teuton  at  Weimar  he  knows  himself 
only  a  fragment,  and  Weimar,  yea  Germany 
itself,  is  but  a  fragment.  So  he  has  to  take 
flight  to  what  he  deems  his  other  half  that  he 
may  integrate  his  own  soul  from  its  destroy- 
ing scission.  Therein  he  performs  his  cul- 
minant deed  of  self-estrangement — heroic  if 


238          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

carried  out  to  the  full — which  he  certainly 
looked  on  as  the  masterstroke  for  his  spirit's 
salvation,  as  his  way  of  reconcilement  with 
God,  since  otherwise  he  were  surely  damned. 
And  such  is  still  his  evangel. 

Whom  did  he  imitate?  He  saw  that  all 
History,  Civilization,  Humanity  had  taken 
that  dip  into  the  classic  Greco-Roman  time, 
Why  should  not  he?  The  World-Spirit  once 
took  this  Italian  Journey  in  its  terrestrial 
round  some  centuries  since,  and  why  should 
not  its  present  supreme  representative  as 
mouthpiece  and  reporter,  namely  the  poet 
Goethe,  do  likewise?  At  any  rate  he  hears 
the  call  from  supernal  sources,  and  resolves 
to  do  the  deed  and  then  deliver  the  message. 
To  be  sure  he  must  not  stick  fast  there,  per- 
manently caught  in  one  only  stage  of  evolu- 
tion; he  must  also  get  out  of  it,  and  return 
to  his  own,  to  his  Weimar,  but  as  a  new  man, 
with  another  world  born  into  his  soul — a 
world  created  long  ago  yet  which  he  must 
recreate  for  himself,  for  his  people,  and  for 
his  age. 

II.  In  many  an  iteration  repeated  during 
his  later  years,  Goethe  characterizes  his  Jour- 
ney to  Italy  as  a  wholly  new  era  of  his  life, 
a  veritable  second  birth.  In  this  way  he  lays 
the  strongest  emphasis  upon  the  deep  separa- 
tion between  his  career  before  that  event  and 


. 
GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  239 

afterwards.  He  looks  back  and  names  his 
flight  from  Weimar  as  his  Hegira  truly  pro- 
phetic as  that  of  Mahomet.  He  writes  from 
Italy  to  Herder,  "I  celebrate  as  a  second 
birth-day,  as  a  true  palingenesis  the  day  on 
which  I  entered  Rome."  A  fresh  activity 
throbs  up,  old  poetic  plans  revive,  works 
which  he  deemed  dead  and  buried,  begin  to 
rise  from  their  graves  and  to  insist  upon  a 
regeneration.  Thus  the  moribund  poet  with 
his  deceased  children  of  the  brain  undergoes 
resurrection  in  Italy.  Says  he  of  that  last 
act  of  his  before  setting  out  for  the  South: 
"When  I  resolved  to  print  my  fragments,  I 
looked  upon  myself  as  dead."  One  great 
Period  of  his  life  was  dead,  but  not  his  life 
itself;  he  was  simply  shedding  one  stage  of 
his  evolution,  and  advancing  to  another.  In 
August,  1787,  he  writes  from  Rome :  "I  have 
passed  through  one  leading  epoch  (Haupt- 
epoche),  completely  ended  it,  and  have  become 
almost  another  man  from  what  I  was  a  year 
ago." 

Thus  Goethe  has  marked  in  many  deep- 
toned  passages  the  separation,  we  might  call 
it  the  chasm  between  what  we  here  have  des- 
ignated as  his  First  and  his  Second  Periods. 
When  he  set  out  for  Italy  he  was  thirty-seven 
years  old ;  'he  had  just  brought  to  a  close  the 
the  Weimar  Decennium  and  with  it  the  entire 


240          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

cycle  of  his  early  career  which  we  periodize 
as  the  First.  But  the  Second  Period  now 
opens,  which  embraces  what  we  may  deem 
his  middle  age,  lasting  more  than  a  score 
of  years  longer,  when  a  new  Period  will  dawn 
and  unfold.  Let  the  reader  then  note  with 
due  attention,  that  these  divisions  of  Goethe 's 
life,  both  the  greater  and  the  less,  are  his 
own,  being  repeatedly  enforced  by  himself 
as  supremely  necessary,  if  we  wish  to  under- 
stand the  man's  personality.  We  may  well 
question  if  any  great  writer  is  as  deeply  and 
suggestively  retrospective  as  Goethe;  he 
sought  to  know  himself  in  his  past  as  the 
chief  fact  of  his  present  personal  existence, 
and  to  attain  a  full  self-consciousness  of  his 
own  career.  Hence  we  shall  often  catch  him 
measuring,  evaluating,  and  delimiting  the 
ground  over  which  he  has  gone  and  the  work 
which  he  has  done,  making  himself  his  own 
life's  careful  surveyor. 

III.  The  question,  therefore,  comes  up  all 
the  more  pressingly,  What  did  Goethe  actu- 
ally get  from  his  Journey  to  Italy?  First  of 
all,  we  may  take  his  own  statement  of  his 
case,  evidently  thrown  off  at  random  in  a 
letter  to  the  Duke  from  Rome:  "The  main 
purpose  of  my  Journey  was  to  cure  me  of  the 
physico-moral  evils  which  tormented  me  in 
Germany,  and  then  to  quench  my  hot  thirst 


. 

GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  241 

for  true  art."  The  first  of  these  reasons  as 
a  private  confession  the  Duke  probably  un- 
derstood, if  we  do  not ;  as  to  the  second  rea- 
son, his  desire  to  come  to  an  inner  clearness 
about  art,  his  book  on  Italy  is  a  continuous 
commentary  upon  it.  Goethe  had  reached 
such  a  point  in  his  cultural  development  that 
he  had  to  appropriate  unto  himself  the  pecu- 
liar expression  of  man  civilized  which  is 
known  as  the  artistic.  Moreover  he  had  to 
go  to  the  land  where  this  unique  evolution 
took  place,  or  which  became  its  center,  and 
which  continues  to  possess  its  historic  re- 
mains. Italy  was  a  museum  of  antiquity 
where  still  the  ancient  forms  of  beauty  could 
be  seen,  and  where  the  old  civilization  could 
be  inhaled  directly  from  the  atmosphere  in 
which  it  was  born.  The  chief  instinct  which 
drove  Goethe  to  Italy,  in  our  opinion,  was 
that  he  must  now  take  up  into  himself  all 
that  his  race  had  been  in  the  way  of  culture. 
He  is  to  become  the  whole  man,  the  individual 
epitome  of  total  humanity,  and  not  merely  a 
German.  Later  we  shall  find  that  even  Eu- 
rope cramps  him  too  much,  and  he  cannot 
stay  European,  but  he  will  betake  himself, 
not  in  person  but  in  imagination,  to  the 
Orient,  to  Persia,  to  India,  even  to  China.  So 
this  desperate  break  for  Italy,  for  the  great 
past  of  Rome  and  also  of  Greece,  is  a  mighty 


242          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

sweep  of  his  Genius  toward  the  universal 
man,  properly  the  ideal  goal  of  us  all.  To 
be  sure  he  will  not  and  cannot  lose  his  Teu- 
tonic substrate  of  character  and  language  in 
this  transfiguration  into  universality. 

At  Rome  he  attempts  in  a  letter  to  desig- 
nate the  grand  change  in  himself  by  a  special 
category,  which  he  calls  solidity:  " Really 
nothing  petty  can  be  found  here.  When  I 
turn  back  into  myself,  as  people  do  so  readily 
at  every  opportunity,  I  discover  a  feeling 
which  gives  me  infinite  joy  so  that  I  dare  even 
express  it.  Whoever  earnestly  looks  around 
here  and  has  eyes  to  see,  must  become  solid — 
he  must  get  a  conception  of  solidity  which 
never  before  had  for  him  any  such  vitality. 
The  spirit  is  stamped  with  a  fresh  efficiency, 
and  reaches  earnestness  without  being  dessi- 
cated,  attaining  a  steadied  nature  yet  ever 
joyous."  This  curious  passage  of  self -in- 
spection (which  we  have  freely  translated 
according  to  our  view  of  its  purport)  hints 
the  inner  transformation  of  the  man  commun- 
ing with  the  mighty  presence  of  a  greatness 
which  is  indeed  past,  but  whose  spirit  still 
hovers  over  the  spot  where  it  was  once  the 
supreme  living  reality.  Such  a  spirit  the  trav- 
eler Goethe  will  take  up  and  make  over  into 
his  own,  and  thus  become  a  solid  character, 
no  longer  foggy,  flighty,  ephemeral,  suddenly 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  243 

explosive.  No  longer  the  volcanic  Titan  can  he 
be,  whom  he  now  sees  to  have  constituted  only 
a  fragment  of  the  great  Whole,  and  a  negative 
fragment  at  that.  The  Heaven-stormer  of 
the  Frankfort  Quadrennium  is  himself  as- 
cending into  glorified  Olympus,  and  becoming 
as  one  of  its  serene  Gods  in  the  happy  classic 
land.  And  the  paralyzed  poet  of  the  Wei- 
mar Decennium  is  fledging  afresh  his  wings 
of  song,  is  getting  creative  once  more  in  a 
second  juvenescence,  being  dipped  in  the  orig- 
inal fountain  of  the  world's  poetry  and  art. 
He  felt  himself  already  an  old  man  at  the 
end  of  his  First  Period,  but  now  he  rebounds 
with  the  elasticity  of  youth  again  in  its  primal 
upspring  toward  creation.  So  he  exclaims: 
"My  renascence,  which  keeps  working  me 
over  from  within  outward,  goes  on  ferment- 
ing. "  A  changed  world-view  he  spies  in 
himself,  "which  this  life-  here  in  a  wider 
world  has  instilled  into  me. "  Then  he  makes 
the  pivotal  confession:  "Verily  it  is  my 
ethical  sense  along  with  my  artistic  sense 
which  is  undergoing  the  great  renewal." 
Here  we  dare  interpret  that  the  insight  is  now 
dawning  upon  the  poet  that  the  world  of  in- 
situtions,  the  true  ethical  world,  is  the  basis 
of  all  right  life  as  well  as  of  all  right  poetry. 
Hardly  can  his  words  mean  the  narrow  moral 
view  of  the  universe,  to  which  way  of  think- 


244          GOETHE'S  LIFE -POEM. —PART  SECOND. 

ing  he  was  always  averse,  probably  too 
much  so. 

At  any  rate,  we  may  affirm  that  Goethe  is 
again  attending  a  University,  not  that  of 
Leipzig  or  Strassburg,  as  he  once  did;  we 
may  deem  it  the  University  of  the  World  and 
the  World's  History,  which  in  his  time  was 
located  at  Rome,  and  still  is  to  be  sought 
there  in  many  of  its  unique  branches.  In  this 
sense  he  is  going  back  to  his  youth,  and 
starts  a  curriculum  of  studies,  whereof  we 
read  not  a  few  details  in  his  book  on  Italy. 
But  the  main  fact  is  that  this  University  was 
a  true  University,  true  to  its  name  and  right 
purpose  which  is  to  universalize  the  man,  not 
simply  to  specialize  him  into  thousandfold 
knowledges,  but  into  the  one  supreme,  all- 
embracing,  all-organizing  knowledge.  "No 
such  thing  possible, "  cries  out  our  time's 
skepticism  and  pessimism,  portentous  prod- 
ducts  largely  of  our  modern  University  train- 
ing. Goethe's  Italian  book  becomes  thus  a 
work  of  great  significance  to-day,  being  the 
record  of  the  struggles  of  a  student  at  the 
World's  University,  located  at  the  heart  of 
the  World's  History,  whose  essence  he  is 
striving  amid  all  his  wanderings  and  caprices 
to  appropriate. 

Hence  it  comes  that  his  stay  will  be  some- 
what prolonged.  At  first  he  intended  to  dash 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  245 

through  two  thousand  years  of  the  Time- 
stream  at  its  highest  tide  in  a  few  months — 
many  a  modern  tourist  winds  up  the  whole 
matter  in  one  or  two  weeks,  which  may  be 
better  than  mere  zero,  but  usually  is  not 
much  more.  Very  different  in  this  regard 
was  Goethe,  who  could  not  relax  his  desper- 
ate grapple  with  the  University  of  Civiliza- 
tion till  he  had  won  possibly  its  heart's 
secret,  or  at  least  some  of  its  profoundest 
lore  which  he  could  take  home  with  him  and 
realize  at  his  leisure.  So  he  puts  off  again 
and  again  his  fixed  day  of  departure,  till  al- 
most two  years  have  sped  away.  Finally, 
on  the  23rd  day  of  April,  1788,  he  quits  Rome, 
passing  out  by  the  Porta  del  Populo,  which 
he  had  entered  October  29th,  1786,  and  winds 
down  the  Flaminian  Way  gradually  out  of 
sight  of  the  Eternal  City,  which  had  given 
him  such  a  lesson  of  its  eternity.  His  imme- 
diate associates  have  handed  down  the  state- 
ment that  every  day  for  two  weeks  before 
his  departure  he  wept  like  a  child.  He  com- 
pared himself  to  ancient  Ovid,  who  was  ban- 
ished from  Rome  by  Augustus,  and  poured 
forth  his  lament  in  an  'Elegy  (Tristia)  as  he 
quit  the  city  on  a  moonlighted  evening.  Long 
afterwards  the  old  Goethe,  pensively  retro- 
spective, could  say  to  Eckermann:  "Com- 
pared to  my  state  of  mind  in  Rome,  I  have 


246          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

never  been  really  glad  since/'  Such  then 
was  his  exalted  mood,  the  mood  of  a  human 
being  who  is  daily  sweeping  toward  the  goal 
of  his  full  humanity,  and  feels  the  ever  ex- 
panding joy  of  rising  to  the  universal  man. 
So  we  may  understand  another  old-age 
declaration  of  his:  "I  can  say  that  only 
in  Rome  have  I  experienced  what  it  is  to  be 
properly  a  Man  (Mensch)." 

IV.  And  now  we  have  to  ask,  What  part 
of  the  total  Eoman  heritage  did  Goethe  take 
unto  himself  with  the  deepest  and  most  inti- 
mate love?  For  he  by  no  means  cared  for  all 
of  it  equally ;  not  a  little  of  it  he  passed  with 
an  empty  and  silent  stare;  and  some  of  it 
he  rejected  downright,  even  with  a  Mephisto- 
phelean scoff.  There  is  no  question  that 
Rome  the  antique  was  his  darling,  with  what 
had  been  left  of  her  art,  even  if  chiefly  bor- 
rowed or  imitated  from  that  of  Hellas.  To- 
day the  traveler  finds  on  the  same  spot  of 
ground  three  great  Romes  layered  chrono- 
logically, the  ancient,  the  medieval  and  the 
modern ;  the  last  as  the  capital  of  new  united 
Italy  had  not  yet  been  born  when  Goethe 
threaded  the  narrow  Roman  streets.  But 
medieval  Rome  was  there  present  in  full  dom- 
ination, spiritual  and  temporal;  but  to  it  he 
paid  hardly  enough  attention  to  show  his 
aversion.  Undoubtedly  he  went  the  round 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIO&.  247 

of  the  multitudinous  churches,  old  and  new, 
but  with  no  devotion  in  his  soul,  yea  with  no 
hearty  appreciation  of  their  art.  The  fact 
is,  Goethe  was  fundamentally  in  an  anti- 
Christian,  heathen  mood  at  Rome,  and  his 
divine  associates  were  the  old  Gods.  He  had 
not  yet  evolved  into  the  Middle  Ages  whose 
expression  in  all  its  forms,  in  religion,  art, 
and  institutions,  were  repugnant  to  his  pres- 
ent bent  and  deepest  instinct.  So  it  comes 
that  of  the  three  great  historic  Presences  on 
the  soil  of  Rome  he  loved  only  the  ancient  one, 
and  sought  to  build  its  shrine  in  his  heart. 

That  is,  Sculpture,  the  art  of  the  ancient 
world  was  really  the  profoundest  object  of 
his  aspiration,  we  might  say,  of  his  venera- 
tion. It  was  that  which  he  would  penetrate 
both  with  his  feeling  and  his  intellect,  nay, 
he  would  like  to  become  its  creative,  or  rather 
re-creative  artist.  Undoubtedly  he  dallied 
much  with  drawing  and  painting,  and  brooded 
over  their  artistic  meaning  for  his  culture 
and  even  for  his  vocation  in  life.  He  had 
many  dealings  with  artists,  especially  Ger- 
man artists,  who  often  gave  a  temporary 
splash  of  their  color  to  his  soul.  Still  he 
would  sink  back  upon  the  Antique  as  his  artis- 
tic bed-rock,  and  seek  to  transmute  himself 
into  the  consciousness  which  could  create 
such  a  world  of  beautiful  forms. 


248          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

And  to  his  own  guild  of  poets,  what  was 
his  attitude?  We  turn  the  leaves  of  his  book 
and  are  astonished  to  find  how  little  the  great 
medieval  sunburst  of  Italian  poetry  shone 
into  his  vision.  Nothing  of  Petrarch  or  Bocac- 
cio,  both  of  whom  would  naturally  be  thought 
as  very  attractive  to  our  Phileros,  the  lover 
of  Love.  Nothing  of  that  shining  melodious 
band  of  romantic  poets  headed  by  Boiardo 
and  Ariosto,  with  their  endless  frisking  of 
fancies ;  only  Tasso,  known  to  him  from  boy- 
hood, seems  to  have  occupied  him  seriously, 
since  Tasso,  the  poet  at  the  little  court  of 
Ferrara,  had  gradually  grown  into  a  type  of 
himself — Goethe  at  the  little  court  of  Wei- 
mar, soon  to  be  set  forth  in  one  of  his  deep- 
est-keyed dramas.  But  what  about  the  great- 
est, most  universal  poet  of  them  all,  Dante, 
writer  of  one  of  the  Literary  Bibles  of  the 
race  ?  Some  Italian  admirer  appears  to  have 
asked  him  in  company,  whereupon  follows  the 
explosion:  "I  have  never  been  able  to  un- 
derstand how  anybody  could  occupy  himself 
with  such  poetry :  the  Inferno  is  simply  hor- 
rible, the  Purgatorio  ambiguous,  the  Para- 
diso  tedious. "  So  the  one  world-poet  judges 
the  other;  but  Goethe  in  his  present  heathen 
mood  could  only  be  repelled  by  the  intensely 
Christian  poet.  But  let  it  be  noted  that 
Goethe  in  later  life  will  make  some  headway 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  249 

—probably  never  much— toward  the  appre- 
ciation of  Dante,  especially  through  the 
medium  of  the  new  German  translation  of 
the  Divine  Comedy  by  Streckfuss.  In  a 
famous  soliloquy  near  the  beginning  of  the 
Second  Part  of  Faust  he  adopts  the  Dantean 
terza  rima  with  its  peculiar  metrical  music, 
and  at  the  close  of  the  same  poem  some  of 
the  horribly  infernal  imagery  of  Dante  is 
summoned  before  us  not  without  a  satirical 
streak.  But  the  most  significant  reproduc- 
tion of  the  Dantean  measure  and  conception 
is  in  Goethe's  short  poem,  entitled  "Reflec- 
tions on  Schiller's  Skull,"  which  skull  hav- 
ing been  dug  up  from  its  resting-place  in  the 
grave,  was  brought  to  Goethe  for  inspection 
and  identification.  Nothing  in  Dante  is  more 
ghoulish  and  skin- shiver  ing  than  this  grue- 
some incident,  in  which  classic  Goethe,  now 
also  taking  a  short  dip  into  the  realms  of  the 
dead  like  Dante,  gives  utterance  to  his  philos- 
ophy of  bones  which  he  had  much  handled  in 
his  osteological  studies.  In  grim  Teutonic 
humor  and  grisly  grotesquery  the  whole  situ- 
ation outstrips  Dante,  who  never  quite 
reaches  the  lofty  apex  of  Goethe  here  fond- 
ling the  death's  head  of  his  dearest  friend  and 
exclaiming:  "How  am  I  worthy  of  holding 
thee  in  my  hand!"  And  rising  out  of  this 
bone-house  the  Teutonic  poet  visions  a  grand 


250          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

revelation  of  God  (God-Nature  is  the  Spino- 
zan  name  here)  wherein  again  he  is  like 
Dante  in  all  his  unlikeness.  So  much  for  the 
peculiar  relation  between  these  two  supreme 
masters  in  the  poetic  realm ;  but  we  must  add 
that  Goethe's  appreciation  of  the  two  other 
world-poets,  Homer  and  Shakespeare,  was  of 
the  highest ;  in  their  case  he  felt  the  deep  un- 
derlying kinship  which  begat  him  and 
twinned  him  with  the  supreme  Parnassian 
brotherhood  of  the  ages.  But  Italy  did  not 
reveal  to  him  the  poet  of  all  its  poets,  ancient 
or  modern. 

Was  Goethe,  then  drawn  to  no  poetry  on 
the  Italian  soil?  Undoubtedly,  but  it  seems 
to  have  been  chiefly  ancient  Roman  verse  and 
small  verse  at  that;  little  Propertius  took 
strong  hold  of  him,  and  to  the  audacious  ob- 
scenities of  spicy  Martial  he  confesses,  along 
with  the  amatory  daring  of  Ovid.  This  in- 
fluence he  will  carry  back  home  with  him  and 
there  reproduce.  Big  rugged  Eome  anciently 
was  a  contrast  with  her  petty  pretty  poetry- 
somewhat  like  America  at  present.  And 
even  this  old  Roman  literature  was  the 
moon's  reflection  of  the  Hellenic  sun;  Greece 
was  the  original  fountain  of  all  Roman  art 
and  literature  to  which  Goethe  appears  so 
devoted. 

In  like  manner  the   sculpture  which  the 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  251 

Northern  pupil  so  diligently  studied  was  not 
original,  but  copied  or  imitated  from  the 
Greek  masterpieces.  He  was  still  in  the 
swaddling-clothes  of  Winkelmann,  a  great 
man  indeed,  but  a  greater  beginner  who  has 
trained  his  pupils,  though  lesser  men,  to 
modify,  and  even  to  reverse  many  of  his  judg- 
ments. On  the  whole,  then,  Goethe  at  Rome 
never  saw  real  Greek  art,  but  only  its  later 
Roman  reflection.  Still  his  enthusiasm  would 
effervesce  beyond  all  bounds.  Thus  he  speaks 
of  the  Juno  Ludovici,  a  copy,  or  it  may  be, 
a  copy  of  copy:  "This  was  my  first  love  in 
Rome.  No  words  can  give  an  idea  of  it.  It 
sings  like  a  song  of  Homer."  In  a  similar 
manner  he  praised  the  Zeus  Otricoli,  which 
modern  criticism  has  so  belittled.  But  recent 
archaeology  has  gone  to  the  other  extreme, 
and  has  underestimated  the  worth  of  these 
Roman  copies  and  reproductions.  The  study 
of  the  Elgin  marbles,  taken  from  the  Par- 
thenon, has  developed  a  new  standard  for 
sculpture  unknown  to  Goethe. 

Still  he  knew  that  this  whole  world  of 
Roman  art  and  literature  was  derivative  from 
ancient  Hellas.  But  he  seems  almost  to  have 
preferred  such  a  copy  to  the  original.  These 
Greek  forms  were  really  exiles  in  Rome  and 
showed  the  fact  in  many  a  little  turn  and 
transformation.  Their  silent  sigh  for  their 


252          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PARr  SECOND. 

native  land  can  still  be  heard  by  the  sympa- 
thetic visitor  who  will  stop  and  listen.  But 
somehow  Goethe  did  not  hear  it ;  or  if  he  did, 
he  held  aloof  from  following  it  to  its  source. 
So  he  turned  away  from  a  tour  to  Greece 
when  he  had  the  opportunity.  Count  Von  Wai- 
deck  gave  him  an  invitation  to  cap  his  Italian 
with  an  Hellenic  Journey.  But  he  declined, 
and  thus  he  never  saw  the  landscape  of 
Greece  and  her  peculiar  environment  of 
Nature;  he  never  got  a  view  of  the  noblest 
Greek  statuary,  genuine  works  of  Phidias, 
the  greatest  sculptor  of  all  time,  which  were 
then  still  to  be  seen  in  the  pediment  of  the 
Parthenon.  And  from  the  supreme  examples 
of  Greek  architecture  at  Athens  he  averted 
his  eyes,  satisfying  himself  with  a  brief  trip 
to  Sicily,  once  colonized  from  Greece.  Yet 
the  chief  purport  of  his  Italian  Journey  was 
that  he  might  be  baptized  in  and  be  regener- 
ated by  Greek  art.  To  our  mind  the  decision 
seems  so  strange,  so  contradictory  of  his 
deepest  bent  that  we  have  tried  to  probe  to 
the  bottom  of  it. 

Dismissing  his  fear  of  sea-sickness,  of 
which  he  had  a  dreadful  attack  during  his 
voyage  to  Sicily,  and  shoving  aside  various 
other  determents  and  inconveniences  which 
can  be  imagined,  we  believe  that  Goethe  in 
Italy  preferred  Hellas  Romanized  to  the  act- 


GOETHE1 8  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  253 

ual  genuine  Hellas  itself.  In  the  first  place, 
the  latter  was  farther  off  from  him  both  in 
space  and  in  spirit.  Then  he  may  have  felt 
the  need  of  a  mediator  like  Rome  who  had 
already  done  what  he  was  trying  to  do — had 
appropriated  Greek  art  and  culture.  Little 
Athens  was  too  like  little  Weimar  which  he 
had  just  left,  and  had  in  a  way  transcended. 
He  would  follow  Borne,  which  had  universal- 
ized«not  only  Greece  but  the  world.  Already 
we  have  noticed  that  the  deepest  trend  of 
Goethe  in  this  Italian  Journey  was  toward 
universality;  he  would  rise  to  be  the  race- 
embracing  man.  Therein  he  felt  his  ultimate 
kinship  with  Borne,  which  in  its  sphere  had 
risen  to  be  the  great  World-State  of  antiquity 
out  of  a  little  City-State  on  the  banks  of  the 
Tiber.  No  Greek  Commonwealth  had  dpne 
the  like;  they  all  showed  themselves  unable 
to  rise  beyond  their  limits  institutionally.  So 
Goethe  longingly  sought  Hellas,  but  he  sought 
it  through  Kome,  not  through  itself.  Only 
Borne  the  universal  could  universalize  him, 
not  the  individualistic  Hellas.  Nor  in  his 
present  mood  could  he  feel  much  inner  incli- 
nation toward  the  history  of  the  typical 
Greek  City-State  with  its  democratic  bent. 
Politically  he  never  did  like  Athens,  creative 
center  of  Greek  art  and  poetry  and  history. 
Thus  Goethe  amid  all  his  Hellenism  and 


254    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

classic  Heathenism  never  poetized  Greece 
from  actual  observation  and  experience;  he 
preferred  to  take  it  through  its  Eoman  trans- 
mutation, as  more  congenial  to  his  present 
stage  of  development.  Still  through  this 
medium  he  tapped  the  Hellenic  fountain-head 
and  made  it  flow  into  Teutonic  speech,  so  that 
in  his  classic  modern  reproductions  he  ap- 
pears a  greater  and  more  original  poet  than 
any  of  his  Roman  prototypes,  not  even  ex- 
cepting Virgil. 

V.  Curiously  significant  is  the  fact  that 
Goethe  often  speaks  of  this  journey  to  Italy 
as  if  it  were  a  return  to  his  own ;  ' i  once  more 
at  home  in  this  world/'  he  cries,  "and  no 
longer  an  exile. ' '  He  had  never  been  during 
life  in  that  land  of  the  sun,  but  the  farther 
South  he  went,  the  more  he  felt  that  he  had 
been  there  before,  and  that  he  was  simply 
coming  back.  Thus  a  new  experience  kept 
fleeting  through  his  soul  dimly,  that  of  a  for- 
mer state,  in  which  he  was  an  inhabitant  of 
the  Mediterranean  world,  whither  he  has  now 
returned  for  a  while  to  take  a  fresh  dip  in 
its  primeval  fountain  of  human  evolution. 
He  has  compared  himself  to  a  somnambulist, 
when  composing  in  an  exalted  mood ;  he  some- 
how went  off  into  another  state  unconscious, 
yet  resembling  the  activity  of  sleep.  And 
during  this  Italian  Journey  he  seemed  in  this 


.4- 
GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  255 

somnambulistic  condition;  he  often  felt  him- 
self half  adream,  another  former  life  floated 
around  him,  a  sense  of  pre-existence  kept 
weaving  through  his  sense  of  existence.  Thus 
his  poetic  imagination  would  literally  fling 
him  back  into  the  antique  past  as  an  actual 
denizen,  a  re-incarnation  of  his  very  self- 
hood he  weened  to  be  taking  place,  so  often 
does  he  allude  to  his  new  birth,  celebrating 
even  what  he  calls  his  second  birth-day  at 
Eome,  now  more  deeply  significant  to  him 
than  his  first  birth-day  at  Frankfort.  Thus 
by  his  intense  aspiration  he  was  wrought  up 
to  the  height  of  realizing  the  old  classic  world 
as  an  actual  presence  here  and  now,  so  that 
he  brought  back  the  pre-existent  to  re-exist 
in  himself  by  a  poetic  metempsychosis.  And 
is  not  some  such  thing  the  chief  fruit  of  a 
visit  to  the  classic  land  to-day?  Can  you 
transmigrate  yourself  backward  and  become 
an  old  Greek  or  an  old  Roman,  and  thus  re- 
incarnate the  soul  of  the  World's  History, 
of  which  they  were  once  the  lofty  builders'? 
And  so  it  comes  that  Goethe  reveals  himself 
a  typical  man  performing  a  typical  journey 
to  the  original  fountains  of  human  culture 
and  civilization. 

Impressive  is  the  attempt  of  Goethe  to  take 
up  the  entire  classic  art-world  into  his  arms, 
or  into  his  brain  and  carry  it  off.  He  worked 


256          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

at  old  coins  and  their  meaning,  he  studied 
gems  and  vases,  he  drew  and  modeled;  he 
would  become  a  new  creator  of  the  antique 
expression,  he  sought  to  be  sculptor,  painter, 
architect.  The  mighty  presence  of  Roman 
antiquity  so  overpowered  him  that  he  became 
confused  for  a  while  about  his  true  vocation 
in  life,  over  which  he  had  always  had  some 
waverings.  Was  he  to  be -an  artist?  Too  old 
for  one  "thing,  but  chiefly  his  true  genius  lies 
in  another  field.  So  at  last  we  hear  the  re- 
gretful confession:  " Every  day  it  becomes 
clearer  to  me  that  I  am  properly  born  to  be 
a  poet, ' '  that  being  his  native  art ;  ' '  from  my 
longer  stay  in  Rome  I  must  henceforth  seek 
this  advantage  that  I  renounce  the  practice 
of  the  plastic  arts."  Still  he  did  not  even 
after  he  returned  to  Weimar;  so  easily  he 
could  not  renounce  so  fond  a  hope,  and  for 
many  years  he  kept  up  a  desultory  dabbling 
with  the  thought  and  thing. 

It  must  not  be  imagined  that  the  journey 
to  Italy  did  not  have  its  drawbacks.  It 
blunted,  yea  stunted  his  perception  for  any 
other  kind  of  art  except  the  classic.  Espe- 
cially the  Gothic,  which  he  once  so  admired 
in  the  Strassburg  minster,  he  flung  under 
his  feet  with  contempt.  Hence  he  showers 
derision  upon  the  Doge's  Palace  at  Venice, 
and  sneers  at  his  own  former  unformed  self 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD*  257 

and  its  likings.  Most  striking  is  his  total  neg- 
lect of  the  unique  Gothic  Church  of  St.  Fran- 
cis at  Assisi  with  its  epochal  frescos,  while 
he  pours  out  his  enthusiasm  for  what  was 
once  a  Roman  temple,  small  and  not  excellent 
of  its  kind.  So  petty  becomes  his  judgment 
at  times  that  we  think  it  must  be  in  great 
Goethe  a  little  affectation.  But  the  narrower 
his  outlook,  the  intenser  it  surges  into  and 
through  the  classical  channel.  Christian  Italy 
with  its  art  he  spurns  on  the  whole ;  it  is  not 
for  him,  at  least  not  now.  And  the  mighty 
expression  of  the  Greco-Roman  world  in  His- 
tory he  hardly  touches  upon.  He  seems  to 
know  nothing  of  its  great  historians.  Indeed 
during  his  entire  life  it  must  be  acknowl- 
edged that  Goethe  was  defective  in  the  his- 
toric sense.  It  is  true  that  in  one  of  his  let- 
ters he  says  that  since  arriving  at  Rome  he 
has  recovered  his  enjoyment  of  History.  But 
of  such  enjoyment  we  hear  little  afterwards, 
except  somewhat  of  the  History  of  Art.  He 
also  declares  that  Rome  is  the  right  spot  for 
studying  Universal  History,  with  which 
statement  the  study  in  his  case  seems  to  have 
come  to  an  end. 

Noticeable  also  is  his  cessation  of  lyrical 
productivity  in  Italy,  compared  with  that  of 
Weimar  and  Frankfort.  Why  did  such  a 
deeply  spontaneous  strain  of  his  soul-life  dry 


258          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

up  so  suddenly?  This  too  lay  in  his  changed 
mood  and  education.  The  lyrical  gush  is  sud- 
den, small,  particular  and  of  the  moment; 
but  Goethe's  Italian  bent  was  toward  the 
Universe  and  the  Universal,  as  already  indi- 
cated. Little  limited  Weimar  and  his  con- 
finement there  would  spurt  forth  into  brief 
snatches  of  songs  of  surpassing  intensity  and 
beauty.  But  the  Eoman  world  released  his 
inward  pressure,  which  is  the  condition  of 
the  throbbing  lyrical  jet  of  utterance,  and 
gave  him  its  ocean  to  flow  into  and  be  lost. 
Still  the  Italian  time  is  not  wholly  without 
pretty  singing  shreds  though  few  and  not  of 
first  import. 

It  is  well  enough  to  reflect  that  the  spirit- 
ual transformation  in  Italy  was  not  so  sud- 
den as  it  seems  on  the  surface,  it  merely  came 
to  a  head  there  after  many  antecedent  throes, 
and  long  preparation.  It  is  true  that  he 
never  was  much  of  a  classical  scholar,  espe- 
cially his  Greek  had  a  crick  in  its  back  which 
had  often  to  be  doctored  before  it  would 
march  to  a  tune.  But  all  the  better  he  caught 
the  spirit  of  the  classic  age  by  not  being 
swamped  in  its  Teutonic  erudition.  Full- 
fledged  Hellenists  like  Voss  complained  of  his 
violation  of  the  niceties  of  Greek  scholarship. 
Goethe's  aim  indeed  was  not  literal  transla- 
tion or  imitation,  but  a  spiritual  transfusing 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  259 

of  the  Greek  world  into  the  modern.  Wherein 
he  has  surpassed  any  other  European  poet. 
Already  at  Frankfort  he  was  Hellenizing,  and 
he  employed  Pindaric  rhythms  with  a  living 
power.  The  free  swing  of  rhymeless  irregu- 
lar measures  is  found  in  some  of  the  finest 
lyrics  of  the  Weimar  Epoch.  He  was  Whit- 
manizing  nearly  a  century  before  Whitman. 
In  his  own  view,  however,  he  was  Pindariz- 
ing,  going  back  to  ancient  Hellas.  Nor  must 
we  forget  that  in  the  parental  home  the  old 
Counsellor  Goethe  was  forever  recurring  in 
his  talk  to  his  days  in  Italy,  over  which  his 
dry,  pedantic  precision  would  show  signs  of 
liquefying.  Pictures  of  Italy  and  its  mas- 
ters abounded  in  the  household,  and  books 
about  the  subject  stood  on  the  library  shelves. 
And  it  was  the  one  thing  which  his  father  was 
always  urging  him  to  do :  take  a  trip  to  Italy 
before  you  are  too  old.  Even  Goethe  himself, 
when  at  last  he  reached  Italy,  could  sigh  forth 
the  lament:  "Why  not  earlier?"  This  was 
in  a  letter  to  his  mother  as  if  in  recognition 
and  memory  of  his  father,  who  never  saw  his 
son  taking  the  oft-advised  Italian  Journey, 
having  died  in  1782.  And  during  the  Weimar 
Epoch  he  started  practicing  himself  in  hexa- 
meters and  in  the  elegiac  stanza,  which  after 
his  return  from  the  South  he  employed  for 
so  many  subjects.  Thus  in  many  a  little 


260          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

throb  he  preluded  his  classical  time  before 
he  started  for  Italy. 

VI.  In  spite  of  his  manifold  occupations, 
and  his  self-scattering  over  multitudinous 
studies — he  tried  always  to  do  too  much — he 
still  clung  to  the  deepest  strand  of  his  being, 
the  poetic,  and  unfolded  it  in  some  of  his  most 
permanent  literary  works — Egmont,  Iphig- 
enia,  and  Tasso,  and  even  Faust,  though  this 
last  Teutonic  poem  resented  in  its  every  fibre 
his  present  bent,  and  refused  to  be  trans- 
formed after  the  classic  model.  So  at  Borne 
he  could  write  the  wildest  scene  in  the  whole 
sweep  of  Faust,  namely,  The  Witches' 
Kitchen,  in  a  kind  of  Gothic  reaction  against 
Classicism.Than  this  no  circumstance  is  more 
significant  of  the  double-natured  poet:  the 
dark  spectral  witch-world  of  the  North  lay- 
ered deepest  in  the  soul  of  the  Teutonic 
Genius  bursts  up  and  insists  on  utterance 
right  in  the  midst  of  the  clear  sunlit  sculptur- 
esque forms  of  the  Olympians.  How  could 
he  help  it?  It  is  in  him,  in  his  folk,  and  in 
their  art  and  poetry.  That  witch-scene,  how- 
ever, was  but  one  passing  spurt.  He  cannot 
finish  his  Faust,  even  its  First  Part,  in  Italy ; 
he  must  wait  till  his  flood-tide  of  classicism 
has  fallen  a  good  deal  in  the  lapse  of  years. 

Hardly  has  he  touched  the  soil  of  Italy 
when  he  feels  its  creative  effect.  His  old 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  261 

fragments  of  great  works,  reaching  back  to 
the  Frankfort  Epoch  revive  in  him,  and 
march  in  thought  toward  completion.  As  he 
rolled  through  the  mountains  in  his  stage- 
coach, the  scheme  of  The  Wandering  Jew 
came  up  to  him  vividly,  and  he  dreamed  it 
out  to  its  conclusion,  which,  however,  he 
failed  to  set  down  in  black  and  white.  What 
peculiar  experience  could  have  brought  up 
that  theme?  He  does  not  say,  but  one  may 
think  of  him  in  his  present  anti-Christian 
mood,  as  represented  in  the  Jewish  scoffer 
at  the  crucifixion.  A  negative  subject  for 
him  at  best ;  no  wonder  he  finally  dropped  it. 
Far  deeper-searching  is  the  fact  that  his 
Iphigenia  began  to  dance  before  his  imagina- 
tion and  to  insist  upon  a  new  birth  here  along 
with  his  own.  At  Weimar  he  had  shaped  her 
drama  in  prose,  and  it  had  been  acted;  but 
that  form  of  her  will  never  do  now ;  the  whole 
must  be  flung  into  this  Italian  melting-pot 
and  poured  over,  giving  her  a  new  classic 
vesture  in  verse.  But  one  asks  why  does  the 
story  of  the  fate  of  Iphigenia  rise  up  just  now 
with  such  a  co-ercive  power  of  expression! 
Essentially  the  Greek  ideal  woman  has  been 
banished  to  a  barbarous  land  where  she  is 
serving  as  priestess  to  a  non-Greek  world, 
say  the  Teutonic.  So  a  fair  image  of  all 
Greek  culture  hovers  before  him  who  may  be 


262          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

said  to  be  seeking  Iphigenia  just  now  in  his 
Journey.  But  another  subtle  psychical 
fact  begins  to  surge  through  him:  an  Iph- 
igenia at  Delphi  seems  for  the  nonce  to  sup- 
plant the  Iphigenia  at  Tauris.  So  he  ex- 
claims: "But  what  happened!  The  spirit 
led  before  my  imagination  the  argument  for 
the  Iphigenia  at  Delphi,  and  I  had  to  work 
it  out."  Why?  again  we  interrogate.  Such 
a  theme  accords  with  Goethe's  deepest  mood, 
hinting  from  afar  that  he  hag-  been  in  separa- 
tion from  his  own  world,  born  in  exile  as  it 
were,  and  now  he  is  returning  to  his  true 
home  in  classic  lands.  So  his  ideal  in  the 
shape  of  Iphigenia  cannot  stay  longer  at 
Tauris  in  the  non-classic  North,  but  must  re- 
turn to  Greece,  yea  to  the  very  center  of  spir- 
itual Greece,  to  Delphi.  There  was  also  an 
ancient  legend  to  this  effect.  Thus  Iphige- 
nia 's  return  had  its  parallel  to  Goethe's 
return,  both  having  been  separated  from  their 
own  right  world.  So  the  poet,  journeying 
Southward,  feels  his  new  kinship,  and  starts 
to  mythologizing  the  same  in  Greek  forms. 
He  writes  in  a  letter  of  this  time :  "It  is  in- 
credible to  what  extent  I  have  been  led  to 
basic  conceptions  of  life  and  art  during  the 
last  eight  weeks. "  He  then  tells  of  a  plan 
for  a  drama  upon  the  wanderer  Ulysses,  who 
also  is  returning  home  "to  sunny  Ithaca  and 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  263 

prudent  Penelope/7  Such  a  theme  likewise 
springs  up  in  tune  with,  his  present  mood  of 
being  the  wanderer  restored  to  his  spiritual 
home.  Many  were  his  struggles  for  expres- 
sion, but  out  of  them  all  rose  three  works  of 
permanence,  Egmont,  Iphigenia  at  Tauris, 
Tasso.  In  fact,  all  his  classic  mythical  knowl- 
edge seems  to  be  undergoing  a  peculiar  meta- 
morphosis into  himself,  and  starts  to  being 
transmuted  into  his  own  life-experience,  espe- 
cially this  present  one  of  Italy. 

With  this  entrance  to  the  classic  land  and 
its  ancient  art,  there  takes  place  a  perma- 
nent personal  assimilation,  both  in  character 
and  in  external  manner,  to  his  ideal.  He  be- 
comes distinctly  what  is  known  as  the  Olym- 
pian Goethe,  his  personality  changes  as  well 
as  his  style  of  writing  in  accord  with  his 
world-view;  his  very  look  turns  Zeus-like. 
No  wonder  he  kept  the  head  of  Zeus  Otricoli 
before  him  in  his  bed-chamber  for  early  and 
late  contemplation.  His  friends  at  Weimar 
after  his  return  complained  that  he  was  not 
the  same  man.  Well,  in  one  sense  he  was 
not;  he  had  sloughed  off  his  old  integument, 
and  showed  the  fact  externally  and  intern- 
ally. 'The  truth  is  he  was  no  longer  a  German 
of  Germany,  but  a  German  of  the  whole  world, 
and  now  he  begins  to  write  not  simply  Ger- 
man, but  universal  literature.  Whence  arose 


264          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

great  complaint  of  his  lack  of  patriotism,  and 
of  his  unwillingness  to  stay  cooped  up  in  the 
Teutonic  pale.  Still  to-day  we  hear  the  same 
objections  from  his  recent  German  biogra- 
phers, some  of  whom  would  absolutely  cut 
out  of  his  career  this  classic  tendency  repre- 
sented by  the  Journey  to  Italy  as  un-German 
and  unfaithful  to  the  Fatherland — Germany 
being  now  over  all,  indeed  just  the  All. 

With  this  change  was  coupled  a  change  in 
his  style  of  writing.  He  could  no  longer  com- 
pose in  the  manner  of  Gotz  and  Werther,  the 
immediate  upburst  was  toned  down  to  classic 
self-control  even  in  the  wildest  passion.  The 
result  was  at  first  a  great  disappointment  in 
his  German  public;  the  national  in  him  has 
risen  to  be  universal  through  Italy,  and  the 
neo-Teutonic  has  evolved  into  the  antique- 
Hellenic,  of  course  through  the  Eoman  chan- 
nel. Still  this  was  the  mightiest  necessity  of 
him  and  of  his  time,  yea  of  his  people  too— 
witness  its  deepest  and  most  representative 
movement,  that  of  philosophy,  from  Kant  to 
Hegel,  really  from  a  German  to  a  universal 
philosopher,  who  was  still  a  German.  Goethe 
had,  'therefore,  to  train  his  public,  and  it  is 
not  yet  trained;  he  wrote  not  only  for  his 
own  people,  but  for  all,  since  all  culture  has 
to  make  this  transition  from  a  local  and  nat- 
ional to  the  universal  spirit.  Many  German 


.      .¥• 
GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  265 

writers  blame  him  because  he  quit  his  purely 
German  soil  and  its  native  literary  forms,  but 
the  world  studies  him  now  because  he  made 
the  grand  passage  which  is  primarily  for  him- 
self and  his  people,  but  also  for  mankind. 
Thus  he  becomes  his  race's  mediator  at  the 
most  significant  node  of  man's  cultural  disci- 
pline. We  must  re-enact  the  highest  spir- 
itual achievements  of  our  racial  kinship  if  we 
wish  to  be  its  worthy  successors. 

Still  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  Goethe 
after  his  Italian  experience  returned  to  Wei- 
mar, where  he  stayed  for  the  rest  of  his  days. 
He  was  not  to  remain  in  Italy  nor  to  get 
stranded  forever  in  the  antique,  but  to  evolve 
into  it,  through  it  and  out  of  it,  as  a  stage  of 
his  development  toward  his  true  goal,  as  one 
strain  of  many  in  his  long  life-poem.  His 
function  was  to  acquire  ancient  culture  for 
his  own  spiritual  health  and  wholeness ;  then 
he  was  to  re-create  it  in  his  native  speech  and 
impart  it  to  his  people,  who  needed  it  as  well 
as  he;  finally  his  deed  as  typical  and  his 
work  as  poetical  were  to  reach  beyond  his 
own  country  and  time  to  distant  and  future 
peoples  and  ages.  In  those  days,  now  more 
than  a  century  and  a  quarter  ago,  it  was 
something  of  an  enterprise  to  go  even  from 
Germany  to  Eome  by  stage-coach,  though 
this  certainly  had  its  advantages  over  a  rail- 


266          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

road  car.  But  at  present  Chicago  is  nearer 
to  Italy  than  Weimar  then  was,  if  we  measure 
by  time,  convenience  and  expense.  Hence 
the  world  can  now  with  no  great  difficulty 
take  Goethe's  Italian  Journey,  and  extern- 
ally run  through  all  its  localities.  But  really 
his  itinerary  was  a  spiritual  one,  and  that 
takes  quite  as  much  time  as  ever. 

Some  years  after  this  first  trip  Goethe  went 
to  Italy  a  second  time.  But  his  stay  was 
brief,  and  he  had  strangely  lost  his  interest 
in  that  country,  turning  it  even  to  a  theme 
of  disparagement  and  satire.  Italy  had 
seemingly  given  him  her  whole  boon  in  his 
first  Journey,  and  there  remained  for  him 
nothing  but  her  filth,  beggary  and  supersti- 
tion in  the  second  visit.  Doubtless  a  deeper 
current  was  starting  just  in  such  a  negative 
attitude. 

VII.  It  must  not  be  left  out  that  Phileros 
went  along  to  Italy;  indeed  he  is  bound  to 
go  where  Goethe  goes,  in  spite  of  certain  re- 
solves to  keep  him  back  or  hold  him  down. 
Goethe  as  lover  is  not  at  all  to  be  smothered 
in  the  hoary  antiquity  of  Kome.  Indeed 
Phileros  will  adjust  himself  to  the  new  situ- 
ation, and  even  take  possession  of  the  antique 
for  his  own  means  of  self-utterance.  To  be 
sure  he  will  find  examples  enough  for  imita- 
tion in  that  ancient  time. 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  267 

But  listen  again!  Out  at  Castel  Gandolfo, 
a  social  resort  not  far  from  Eome,  Goethe 
comes  upon  a  Milanese  lady,  young,  beauti- 
ful, and  very  amiable,  who  in  comparison 
with  the  Roman  ladies  there  present  shone  to 
great  advantage  "by  her  naturalness,  her 
common-sense,  and  her  good  manners. ' '  Such 
is  the  first  gentle  stroke  of  the  Love-God,  as 
recorded  by  himself  in  his  Italian  book.  Then 
follow  games,  little  talks  and  loving  tender- 
nesses till  the  poet  declares :  "I  found  in  the 
strangest  manner  that  my  inclination  for  the 
fair  Milanese  had  taken  a  decided  turn,  shoot- 
ing swift  as  lightning  and  quite  irresistible, 
as  commonly  happens  to  an  unoccupied 
heart. ' '  Goethe  at  her  request  gives  her  les- 
sons in  English — a  very  dangerous  business 
under  the  circumstances.  So  Phileros  is 
again  caught  in  spite  of  some  little  resist- 
ances, partly  real,  but  also  partly  simulated. 
Then  after  the  sweet  dalliance  comes  the 
backstroke  very  suddenly  and  without  warn- 
ing: she  is  engaged  to  another.  Goethe  dis- 
covered this  fact  as  if  by  accident,  through 
asking  an  innocent  question.  He  adds:  "It 
is  not  necessary  to  describe  what  horror 
seized  me  as  I  learned  the  circumstance." 
He  runs  off  as  soon  as  he  can  and  gives  him- 
self up  to  his  agitated  reflections.  Another 
case  of  WertHer  burning  in  the  flame  of  an 


268          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

impossible  love.  Still  our  Phileros  much- 
tried  recounts  of  himself:  "I  had  years  and 
experience  sufficient  to  be  able  to  rally  myself 
at  once,  though  the  effort  was  painful. ' '  Then 
he  exclaims  in  heartfelt  reminiscence  of  his 
former  condition:  "It  would  be  strange  in- 
deed, should  a  fate  like  that  of  Werther  pur- 
sue me  to  Rome."  Thus  the  image  of  the 
suicide  rose  up  before  him  in  his  sudden 
agony.  Still  there  is  no  danger,  the  crisis  is 
very  brief  even  if  poignant.  Nor  will  an- 
other book  burst  out  of  his  emotion,  as  once 
in  his  youth  at  Weimar.  That  Epoch  is  past, 
though  its  scars  remain  and  can  even  start 
to  burn  again  with  a  little  friction.  So  we 
have  only  a  short  account  of  the  affair  in 
Goethe's  Second  Residence  at  Rome.  And 
there  is  no  guilt  and  hence  no  atonement  to 
drive  the  author  to  one  of  his  long  and  intense 
literary  confessions.  Goethe  does  not  men- 
tion her  by  name,  which  a  recent  Italian  in- 
vestigator has  dug  up,  and  two  pictures  of 
her  also,  one  of  them  by  Goethe,  have  been 
exhumed.  So  Maddelena  Riggi,  very  evan- 
escent young  lady,  flitted  before  the  poet,  and 
caught  his  glance  of  love,  which  made  her  im- 
mortal. 

But  the  poet  indulged  at  Eome  in  a  differ- 
ent sort  of  love  from  that  of  Maddelena,  a 
sort  of  which  he  has  given  no*record,  at  least 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  269 

not  directly,  though  indirectly  he  has  told 
enough.  In  the  Roman  Elegies  occurs  the 
name  of  a  shadowy  female  who  evidently  be- 
longed to  the  night-side  of  Koman  life,  and 
whose  relation  to  the  author  is  suspiciously 
hinted  in  many  a  tickling  turn  of  poetic  ex- 
pression. That  was  his  Eoman  Faustina, 
whose  praises  he  sang,  and  who  plainly  gave 
him  his  training  for  his  later  relation  to  his 
Teutonic  Christiane,  both  in  poetry  and  con- 
duct. Here  starts  the  germ  of  the  greatest 
fatality  of  Goethe's  entire  life.  If  he  had 
quit  the  habit  when  he  quit  Eome,  and  had 
left  his  classic  debauch  behind  when  he  re- 
turned to  his  regular  home,  the  matter  would 
have  been  fameless.  But  instead  of  shedding 
his  snake-skin  and  flinging  it  away,  he  takes 
the  serpent  itself  along  with  him  back  to  his 
own  hearth.  In  other  words,  he  re-enacts  at 
Weimar  openly  what  was  more  or  less  a 
clandestine  indulgence  at  Borne,  defiant  of  all 
public  morality.  Thus  Phileros  falls  into  his 
truly  tragic  deed  of  guilt,  giving  way  to  the 
sensuous  side  of  his  nature,  and  daring  to 
violate  the  very  soul  of  the  domestic  institu- 
tion, then  persisting  in  his  violation  through 
many  succeding  years. 

At  Rome,  accordingly,  the  tragedy  of  Phi- 
leros may  be  said  to  start  in  its  primal  act 
of  violation,  unrepented,  unatoned,  and  long- 


270          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

continued.  We  shall  later  find  that  the  poet 
came  to  feel  what  he  had  done,  and  even 
called  his  offspring  the  children  of  Tantalus, 
of  one  who  had  sinned  against  the  Gods.  This 
tragedy  will  spin  an  ever-darkening,  fateful 
thread  through  his  life-poem  during  the 
whole  length  thereof;  even  if  he  has  not  told 
it  openly,  its  influence  can  often  be  traced  in 
his  writings.  Here  we  may  note  only  the 
most  smiting  conclusion  of  the  long  trag- 
edy: after  some  forty  years  Goethe's  son, 
August,  will  perish  of  excess  at  Eome,  as  it 
were  on  the  spot  where  the  original  tragic 
germ,  which  he  bore  in  him,  was  laid. 

VIII.  Goethe  has  left  us  a  book  entitled, 
The  Italian  Journey,  which  has  a  pivotal 
place  in  his  life  and  works.  It  was  put  to- 
gether from  letters  and  memoranda  more 
than  twenty-five  years  after  his  tour,  the  first 
volume  being  published  in  1816.  It  is  a  much- 
scattered  product,  and  has  a  great  deal  of  slag 
for  the  modern  reader,  such  as  the  observa- 
tions on  various  kinds  of  rocks  and  geology 
generally.  Then  there  is  too  much  about  the 
artistic  and  non-artistic  nobodies  who  crossed 
his  path. 

The  book  has  the  atmosphere  of  a  man  let 
loose  after  long  confinement,  and  allowed  to 
roam  in  the  joys  of  a  new  freedom.  Espe- 
cially his  sensuous  nature  breaks*  forth  on  all 


GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIO&.  271 

sides;  every  external  appearance  in  the  sky 
and  landscape  delights  him;  his  pleasure  in 
what  he  eats  is  noted;  he  refuses  to  have  a 
servant  with  him.  "  Every  beggar  points  me 
the  way,  and  I  talk  with  the  people  I  chance 
to  meet  as  if  we  were  old  acquaintances. " 
He  is  democratized  in  Italy,  and  becomes 
one  of  its  rabble ;  each  little  event  is  a  kind  of 
miracle  and  each  petty  object  a  thing  of 
beauty.  He  does  not  wish  to  hear  German 
at  Roveredo,  but  only  "the  beloved  tongue, " 
Italian.  He  puts  on  Italy's  costume,  and 
learns  her  peculiar  gesticulations  and  grim- 
aces as  a  part  of  his  new  vocabulary.  Thus 
he  moves  southward  from  the  Alps  in  a  state 
of  continual  exaltation  and  unconventional 
liberty. 

That  which  especially  attracts  him  is  the 
new  appearance  of  Nature,  who  seems  to  be 
on  a  revel  of  freedom  like  himself.  She 
bursts  forth  into  her  bright  multitudinous 
Southern  forms,  she  too  leaps  up  released  of 
her  German  fetters  of  ice,  cloud  and  fog. 
Any  thought  of  "the  melancholy  Northland " 
produces  a  shiver  in  his  pen ;  he  calls  his  peo- 
ple up  there  "Cimmerians  dwelling  in  eter- 
nal mist  and  gloom  who  hardly  know  what 
the  day  is  like,"  'since  there  "it  is  all  the 
same  whether  it  be  day  or  night."  Thus 
Goethe  reads  sympathetically  his  own  deliv- 


272          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

erance  everywhere  into  his  physical  environ- 
ment. Eeally  he  becomes  the  confirmed  nat- 
uralist in  Italy;  especially  he  gets  on  track 
of  the  typical  plant,  and  wins  his  insight  into 
vegetal  metamorphosis.  As  he  continues  to 
go  Southward  till  Sicily,  the  lavish  outburst 
of  semi-tropical  vegetation  appeals  mightily 
to  the  mood  of  his  soul's  liberation,  all  Nature 
appearing  here  ungyved  like  himself  and 
erupting  into  a  world  of  happy  forms. 

The  human  body  is,  however,  the  culmina- 
tion of  his  rapture.  In  a  letter  from  Borne 
(August  23,  1787)  he  ecstasies:  "Now  at 
last  the  Alpha  and  Omega  of  all  things 
known,  namely,  the  human  form,  has  seized 
hold  of  me  and  I  of  it  till  I  say:  'Lord,  I 
shall  not  let  go  of  thee  unless  thou  bless  me, 
though  I  should  wrestle  myself  lame.'  To 
draw  is  not  enough,  and  accordingly  I  have 
resolved  to  turn  to  modeling. "  Here  is  indi- 
cated his  deeper  transition  from  graphic  to 
plastic  Art,  the  latter  being  the  solid  shape 
and  hence  more  completely  sensuous  or  nat- 
ural, as  he  says.  The  ideal  organism  of  all 
humanity  he  first  sought  to  conceive  and  then 
to  realize;  it  became  his  supreme  goal.  He 
says  in  one  of  his  later  letters:  "I  am  now 
wholly  employed  in  the  study  of  the  human 
form,  the  non-plus-ultra  of  all  man's  know- 
ing and  doing. ' '  He  thought  that  he  had  dis- 


. 

GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  273 

covered  the  principle  of  the  ancient  sculptors, 
who  in  their  Gods  did  not  mould  mere  indi- 
viduals or  make  portraits,  but  produced  in 
their  works  of  art  "the  highest  of  Nature's 
works,  made  by  men  in  accordance  with  true 
and  natural  laws.  All  that  is  arbitrary,  or 
merely  fantastic  perishes;  here  is  necessity, 
here  is  God."  Thus  Goethe  glimpses,  as  he 
thinks,  the  creative  idea  of  the  antique,  and 
he  even  seeks  to  model  it  in  a  little  plaster 
cast,  at  which  he  reports  people  looked  in 
amazement,  disbelieving  it  to  be  his.  So  he 
puts  not  the  living  organism  as  uppermost  in 
Nature,  but  the  work  of  the  old  artist  as  God- 
maker. 

Goethe  would  accordingly  seem  to  place  his 
insight  into  ancient  art  as  the  highest  fruit 
of  his  Italian  Journey.  No  wonder  he  longed 
to  become  a  sculptor.  But  that  was  not  his 
destiny,  it  would  have  been  a  relapse  back- 
ward twenty  centuries  if  he  could  have  suc- 
ceeded. Still  this  delight  in  the  antique  may 
be  deemed  the  summit  of  his  sensuous  out- 
burst in  Italy.  For  Sculpture  is  the  most  im- 
mediate sense-art,  having  length,  breadth 
and  thickness  of  form  like  solid  matter,  and 
not  merely  the  surface  thereof,  as  is  the  case 
with  Painting.  So  Goethe  never  rested  in 
the  unfolding  of  his  sense-life  in  Italy,  till  he 
landed  in  Sculpture,  and  therein  beheld  the 


274          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

creative  ideal  of  the  whole  sense-world — the 
God  himself  taking  on  visible  material  shape 
through  this  Art. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  supreme 
attainment  of  Goethe  in  Italy  .was  to  behold 
the  descent  of  the  Divine  into  full  solid  form, 
which  thus  became  the  statue  of  the  God. 
That  was  the  religious  view  of  the  old  Greek, 
the  deities  came  down  and  revealed  them- 
selves visibly  in  actual  shape  to  Homer  for 
his  poetry  as  well  as  to  Phidias  for  his  statue. 
Hence  springs  Goethe's  love  of  the  ancient 
Hellenic  world,  which  he  never  tires  of  prais- 
ing. He  reaches  the  point  of  sharing  its  con- 
sciousness, and  thus  of  becoming  a  heathen, 
as  he  was  often  called.  Still  he  did  not  stay 
forever  in  this  classic  stage.  But  he  did  at- 
tain to  a  vision  of  the  old  Greek  Theophany, 
or  the  God's  sensible  manifestation  in  art, 
especially  that  of  Sculpture.  So  we  gather 
from  many  a  passage,  particularly  in  the  lat- 
ter part  of  this  Italian  Journey.  His  use  of 
the  term  solidity  (already  noted)  as  charac- 
teristic of  the  antique  world  would  seem  to 
come  from  the  fact  that  the  statue  is  solid, 
real,  with  matter's  three  dimensions,  not  an 
illusion  of  reality,  such  as  is  a  picture.  Goethe 
himself  became  solid  in  Italy,  transformed 
into  his  own  ideal  of  art;  he  turned  to 
a  kind  of  statue,  very  real  indeed,  yet 


. 

GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  275 

with  the  Divine  in  him  and  through  him  mani- 
fested. 

The  drawback  did  not  fail  to  show  itself 
when  he  came  home.  He  was  separated  from 
his  time  and  people,  isolated,  solitary.  Such 
was  his  deep  estrangement ;  it  took  him  some 
years  to  get  back  to  his  own  and  to  himself, 
and  he  had  to  go  through  a  peculiar  discipline 
which  is  to  be  narrated  later.  Still  he  did 
not  lose  his  classic  impress,  but  he  stamped 
it  harmoniously  upon  his  Northern  heritage, 
especially  in  poetry. 

IX.  Goethe  gets  back  to  Weimar  April 
23rd,  1788,  after  an  absence  of  nearly  two 
years,  measured  by  the  calendar,  but  told  on 
the  horologe  of  the  spirit  he  had  been  far 
away  from  home  for  centuries.  He  found  his 
place  filled,  the  world  was  moving  on  without 
him,  even  in  matters  of  business  he  was  quite 
dispensable.  Such  a  feeling  comes  over  every 
man  who  has  been  abroad  for  a  couple  of 
years,  his  social  niche  is  taken,  perchance  his 
economic  position  must  be  entirely  re-made. 
To  a  certain  extent  he  has  to  begin  life  over, 
downcast  in  gloomy  humiliation  at  his  lack 
of  importance  in  his  own  little  community. 
In  Goethe's  case  such  a  feeling  must  have 
been  intensified  by  the  contrast  with  his 
former  station.  But  that  was  not  all.  He 
came  back  from  another  world  a  different 


276          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  SECOND. 

man,  deeply  estranged  from  his  environment. 
He  was  in  spirit  a  denizen  of  the  Greco- 
Roman  era,  Italianized.  Also  we  may  call 
him,  alienated  from  his  native  land  and  its 
folk,  and  therefore  from  himself.  His  man- 
ner was  altered,  had  become  statuesque, 
marble-cold,  even  if  marble-grand;  his  style 
of  expression  was  transformed,  no  longer 
direct  and  spontaneous,  but  measured  and 
serene,  freed  from  its  old  ebullience.  Ho 
sought  to  manifest  in  act  and  writ  the  eternal 
when  he  said:  "I  would  occupy  myself  only 
with  permanent  relations." 

Thus  his  very  personality  is  changed,  hav- 
ing been  shifted  from  its  native  base  in  his 
own  country  and  people  by  his  present  clas- 
sical pursuit.  In  some  such  mood  he  comes 
back  to  Weimar  during  his  thirty-ninth  year, 
hence  on  the  brink  of  his  middle  life,  which 
should  contain  his  best  and  greatest  achieve- 
ment. His  whole  line  of  return  from  Eome 
seems  to  have  been  strewn  with  sighs,  which 
became  deeper  when  he  touched  German  soil. 
He  says  that  his  companion  was  the  melan- 
choly of  "a  passionate  soul  which  feels  itself 
dragged  irresistibly  to  an  irrevocable  ban- 
ishment." Thus  he  intimates  again  that  he 
deemed  Eome  his  true  fatherland,  which  he 
had  to  quit. 

Still  Goethe  knows  in  the  deepest  and  best 


.*• 

GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  277 

of  him  that  he  is  a  German  and  must  return 
to  his  own  in  Germany.  Nevertheless  he 
shows  the  wrenching  scission  in  himself  be- 
tween two  cultures,  he  is  halved  within, 
divided  at  present  in  his  very  soul,  and  the 
two  halves  are  pulling  him  asunder  in  oppo- 
site directions.  Yet  he  will  not  stay  at  Rome, 
does  not,  and  he  knows  what  he  has  to  do  in 
spite  of  all  his  suspiration.  So  he  trips  back 
to  Weimar  and  home,  away  from  Italy's 
beauty  and  allurement. 

Externally,  then  he  has  returned ;  but  now 
arises  the  far  harder  and  deeper  problem  of 
an  internal  return,  the  spiritual  reconcilia- 
tion of  the  two  sides,  or  of  the  two  halves  of 
his  warring  self.  And  this  conflict  is  not 
merely  his  own,  or  subjective,  it  lies  in  the 
time,  yea  in  civilization  itself.  Far-reaching, 
then,  is  the  collision  which  Goethe  has  to 
meet  and  solve  in  his  way.  This  is  what  prop- 
erly constitutes  the  woi^k  of  his  Second 
Period,  upon  which  he  has  now  started.  It 
will  last  more  than  twenty  years  after  his 
arrival  from  Italy,  and  bears  in  itself  a  great 
spiritual  movement  which  is  not  only  indi- 
vidual but  universal.  It  embraces  the  mature 
middle-aged  activity  of  the  poet,  very  diver- 
sified in  its  multitudinous  manifestations,  and 
not  easy  to  put  into  a  transparent  order. 

Upon  what  thought,  then,  does  the  whole 


278          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

Period  hinge  1  As  before  said,  Goethe  has 
returned  to  Weimar  profoundly  estranged 
from  his  environing  world  and  from  his  true 
self,  through  his  Italian  experience.  The 
supreme  object  henceforth  must  be  to  get 
back  to  his  own  internally  and  externally, 
without  losing  his  great  new  gain  gotten  from 
abroad.  He  has  to  work  through  to  the  har- 
mony of  the  two  clashing  world-views  which 
now  keep  him  in  discord  and  alienation.  This 
will  give  a  long  list  of  writings,  for  his 
method  of  winning  peace  and  atonement  is 
his  pen. 

In  other  words,  the  poet  in  the  present 
Period  is  to  pass  through  a  complete  process 
of  mediation,  which  word  may  be  taken  as 
the  best  for  expressing  his  inner  movement. 
This  process  will  show  three  sweeps  or  stages 
each  of  which  makes  a  fresh  Epoch  in  his 
life's  total  round.  These  may  be  briefly  des- 
ignated as  follows: 

(I).  The  solitary  Goethe — isolated,  es- 
tranged, shut  up  alone  in  his  classical  fort- 
ress, unreconciled  and  unmediated  with  his 
people  and  with  himself — Chapter  Fourth. 

(II).  Goethe's  friendship  with  Schiller, 
which  breaks  up  his  solitariness  and  associ- 
ates him  anew.  He  is  no  longer  single,  but 
twofold  and  manifold  in  his  reconciliation 
with  life.  Each  poet  becomes  the  other  and 


. 
•GOETHE'S  MIDDLE  PERIOD.  279 

is  through  the  other  to  a  large  extent. 
Goethe  is  now  mediated  with  the  world  and 
himself.  This  Epoch,  the  central  one  of 
Goethe 's  whole  career,  lasts  as  long  as  Schil- 
ler lives,  about  ten  years,  hence  we  shall  often 
call  it  the  Goethe-Schiller  Decennium — Chap- 
ter Fifth. 

(III.)  Goethe  is  alone  again  after  the 
death  of  Schiller,  yet  not  solitary  and  un- 
reconciled but  renovated  and  restored  to  him- 
self and  to  the  world — not  only  mediated 
through  another,  but  self -mediated,  becoming 
his  own  center  of  life  and  achievement.  More- 
over, his  distinctively  classical  stage,  with  its 
dualism,  is  brought  to  a  close  in  a  renewed 
unity  with  himself  and  his  own. 

Such  is  a  brief  forecast  of  the  sweep  of 
this  Second  Period,  which  is  to  receive  more 
fully  its  illustration  in  the  exposition  which 
follows.  It  is  the  abiding  worth  of  Goethe 
for  human  culture  that  he  passed  through 
this  peculiar  discipline,  and  left  it  recorded 
for  us  who  come  after  him,  in  forms  of  lofty 
art.  Thus  literature  in  its  deepest  strain 
reveals  its  vicarious  character;  the  great 
writer  suffers  for  us  and  portrays  his  deed 
for  our  lesson,  if  we  can  take  it,  through  his 
transmitted  experience.  For  Goethe's  classi- 
cism had  its  values  to  be  gained  as  well  as 
its  limits  to  be  transcended,  its  sorrows  along 


280    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

with  its  joys,  its  negative  as  well  as  its  posi- 
tive side. 

To-day  Italy  is  still  more  nearly  the  mod- 
ern home  of  the  ancient  world  than  any  other 
land  on  our  globe,  notwithstanding  many  re- 
cent changes.  The  Italian  Journey  is  yet  in 
order  for  the  man  of  culture  who  wishes  to 
find  his  own  pre-suppositions  and  those  of  hip 
age.  More  completely  than  any  other  mod- 
ern man  Goethe  went  through  this  purga- 
torial discipline  and  set  it  down  in  writ  that 
bids  fair  to  be  eternal. 


THE  SOLITARY  GOETHE.  281 

CHAPTER  FOURTH. 

THE  SOLITARY  GOETHE. 

Thus  we  designate  the  poet  immediately 
after  his  return  from  Italy  in  accord  with  his 
own  repeated  declarations — alone,  isolated, 
unappreciated.  Here  is  a  passage  in  which 
he  pathetically  tells  his  situation:  "From 
Italy  the  formful  to  Germany  the  formless 
I  was  turned  back,  having  to  exchange  bright 
skies  for  gloomy ;  my  friends  instead  of  com- 
forting me  and  drawing  me  to  themselves, 
brought  me  to  despair.  My  enthusiasm  over 
far-off  and  hardly  known  objects  seemed  to 
offend  them,  as  did  also  my  suffering  and  my 
laments  over  the  lost  paradise ;  I  received  no 
sympathy,  nobody  understood  my  language. ' ' 
Such  was  his  solitary  position;  no  friends,  no 
interchange  of  ideas,  not  even  a  common 
speech.  One  of  his  old  admirers  wrote  of 
him  at  this  time :  ' '  He  is  no  longer  good  for 
anything,  quite  out  of  place  in  Weimar  now. ' ' 
When  he  would  impart  his  new  "experiences, 
a  cup  of  cold  water  seemed  to  be  dashed  upon 
him  from  every  countenance.  He  exclaims: 
"I  could  not  adjust  myself  to  such  a  painful 
condition,  the  deprivation  was  too  great. " 
Still  he  could  not  flee  back  to  Italy,  that  would 
be  to  renounce  his  destiny. 


282          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

So  the  desolate  poet  roamed  about  his  fami- 
liar little  city  as  if  in  a  desert.  The  deepest 
bond,  that  of  love,  which  formerly  tied  him 
to  the  place,  was  broken.  The  breach  with 
Frau  Von  Stein  could  not  be  healed.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  Goethe's  loneliness  contrib- 
uted not  a  little  to  drive  him  to  the  fateful 
Christiane,  when  she  appeared  at  the  right 
moment.  Phileros  had  to  have  somebody  to 
love,  and  at  last  in  a  kind  of  desperation  he 
took  the  sudden  chance  which  dropped  on  his 
path.  Then  the  rupture  with  Frau  Von  Stein 
became  deeper  and  more  acrid,  and  she  began 
to  play  the  part  of  ill-croaking  Cassandra  to 
the  poet  and  his  house. 

Also  his  literary  audience  failed  him  com- 
pletely. Nobody  liked  the  new  style  which 
he  had  brought  from  Italy.  Great  was  the 
disappointment  of  the  public  at  the  strange 
evolution  of  the  author  of  Wertlier,  who, 
from  being  the  most  favored  writer  of  Ger- 
many, passed  into  an  almost  total  eclipse  of 
unpopularity.  Herder,  his  old  literary 
friend,  falls  off,  and  becomes  more  critical 
than  ever.  Yet  he  also  soon  takes  the  jour- 
ney to  Italy  as  if  in  a  kind  of  rivalry,  but  its 
import  is  nothing  in  comparison  to  that  of 
Goethe,  who  therein  illustrated  an  era  of  his 
own  and  of  the  world's  culture. 

Goethe's  attitude  toward  German  litera- 


.*• 
THE  SOLITARY  GOETHE.  283 

hire  at  this  time  was  that  of  the  solitary  poet. 
What  he  had  gone  through  some  dozen  and 
more  years  previously,  and  had  transcended, 
he  found  in  full  swing.  That  is,  the  Epoch 
of  Storm  and  Stress  he  saw  rise  up 
before  him  on  the  topmost  wave  of  popular 
favor,  to  his  unspeakable  disgust.  Long 
afterwards  in  a  conversation  reported  by 
Riemer  he  described  the  situation  with 
warmth:  " After  my  return  from  Italy, 
where  I  had  labored  to  unfold  myself  to 
greater  definiteness  and  purity  in  all  depart- 
ments of  Art,  I  found  poetical  works,  old  and 
new,  enjoying  the  greatest  distinction — works 
which  filled  me  with  the  last  degree  of  dis- 
gust, of  which  I  shall  mention  two,  Heinse's 
Ardinghello  and  Schiller's  Robbers/'  These 
were  essentially  dramas  of  the  Storm  and 
Stress,  which  he  had  actually  started  and 
made  universally  famous  during  his  Frank- 
fort Quadrennium,  but  he  has  come  to  loathe 
his  former  Self  and  its  expression  through 
his  Italian  training.  So  he  hisses  at  his  old 
outgrown  Epoch  now  revivified  and  made 
the  time's  vogue  by  lesser  and  immature 
poets,  while  the  works  of  his  new-born  spirit 
lay  not  only  neglected  but  spurned.  Thus: 
"I  was  terrified  at  the  thunderous  applause 
given  throughout  my  whole  country  not  only 
by  the  uproarious  student,  but  by  the  highly 


284          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

cultivated  court-lady  to  such  monstrosities; 
for  I  thought  I  saw  all  my  efforts  completely 
lost;  the  objects  for  which,  as  well  as  the 
method  and  style  in  which  I  had  developed 
myself,  seemed  to  me  lamed  and  thrust 
aside."  Such  is  the  melancholy  overture  of 
the  now  solitary  and  unappreciated  Genius, 
quite  supplanted  and  undone  by  his  own 
diminutive  creatures.  Nothing  can  he  do  but 
take  a  dismal  backlook:  "I  who  sought  to 
nourish  and  to  impart  the  purest  views  of  art 
found  myself  helplessly  wedged  in  between 
Ardinghello  and  Franz  Moor"  (Heinse's  and 
Schiller's  heroes). 

It  was  a  pitiable  plight  indeed  for  the  new- 
fledged  spirit,  but  one  of  which  he  has  to  take 
the  bitter  discipline  till  the  day  of  relief 
dawns.  This  was  when  he  had  his  first  sym- 
pathetic meeting  with  Schiller,  whose  friend- 
ship breaks  down  the  walls  of  his  solitary 
Self's  prison  and  lets  him  forth  again  into 
the  world,  starting  his  new  freedom  and  re- 
conciliation. This  friendship  was  gradually 
cemented  in  the  middle  months  of  1794,  quite 
six  years  after  Goethe's  return  from  Italy. 
That  was  surely  a  long  and  lonely  incarcera- 
tion, not  of  the  body,  but  of  the  soul,  and 
the  day  of  his  liberation  as  well  as  his  libera- 
tor became  in  Goethe's  memory  objects  of 
almost  worshipful  gratitude.  Such,  then,  are 


. 
THE  SOLITARY  GOETHE.  285 

the  limits  in  time  of  this  Fourth  Epoch,  which 
including  the  Italian  Journey  lasts  some 
eight  years.  Again  we  may  note  that  it  is 
Goethe  himself  who  has  repeatedly  and  with 
precision  marked  this  Epoch  of  his  life  lying 
between  Italy  and  Schiller. 

Much  takes  place  in  these  days:  in  the 
World's  History  it  is  the  time  of  the  French 
Eevolution,  which  runs  so  dizzily  and  terribly 
its  first  round  from  the  Convocation  of  the 
States  General  till  the  appearance  of  Bona- 
parte. But  from  this  great  event  also  Goethe 
was  in  spirit  quite  isolated,  hardly  getting 
at  present  a  glimpse  of  what  it  really  meant. 
But  he  was  active,  and  of  this  activity  we 
must  not  fail  to  give  due  account. 

Still  we  are  not  to  forget  Goethe  himself 
has  to  take  his  part  of  the  blame  for  his  iso- 
lation. Everybody  complained  of  his  chilling 
haughtiness,  of  his  lack  of  sympathy.  From 
his  long,  intense  study  and  appropriation  of 
Sculpture,  he  had  himself  turned  to  a  statue, 
living  indeed,  but  belonging  to  cold,  snowy 
Olympus.  In  his  case  we  think  of  the  ancient 
conception  of  deity  as  movens  non  motus.  He 
might  arouse  feeling,  but  he  himself  was  not 
to  feel  in  turn;  he  had  quite  lost  his  social 
instinct  and  his  desire  of  imparting  himself. 

Moreover,  the  Duke  had  practically  freed 
him  from  his  official  duties,  at  least  the  most 


286          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  8ECOND. 

onerous  ones.  Thus  he  was  isolated  from  the 
State,  and  had  no  co-ercing  tasks  of  vocation. 
So  in  the  matter  of  occupation  he  was  left 
largely  to  himself.  A  dissociated  man  in  the 
midst  of  a  social  order,  he  could  not  help  feel- 
ing all  the  more  solitary.  It  might  almost  be 
said  that  his  Greek  ideal  had  become  incor- 
porate in  his  own  body.  He  was  indeed  the 
Olympian  Goethe,  Zeus-like,  modeled  in  life 
after  the  bust  of  Otricoli,  which  was  his  favor- 
ite piece  of  statuary.  Still  let  us  not  forget 
that  this  is  but  a  stage  of  the  total  Goethe, 
which  he  has  to  take  up,  live  through,  and 
then  transcend,  when  it  has  given  to  him  its 
full  fruitage. 

But  Goethe 's  ultimate  passion  after  all 
was  the  written  word.  Suggestive  it  is  to 
watch  him  in  Italy  turning  away  from  his 
dear  sculpture  and  archaeology  and  nature 
to  poetic  composition  in  answer  to  the  deep- 
est call  of  his  spirit.  Under  Italian  skies 
even  he  could  not  help  writing  German 
poetry,  of  course  more  or  less  Italianized. 
After  his  return  in  his  issolation  he  kept  on 
writing,  though  the  output  contains  a  good 
deal  of  perishable  stuff.  Of  this  Epoch  we 
shall  set  down  the  leading  items. 


GOETHE'S  DRAMATIC  TRILOGY.  287 


I. 

Goethe's  Dramatic  Trilogy. 

Three  dramas  of  Goethe  deserve  to  be  put 
together  under  a  common  rubric  on  account 
of  their  common  origin,  development  and 
time  of  completion,  as  well  as  on  account  of 
their  common  place  in  the  poet's  evolution. 
These  are  his  Egmont,  his  Iphigenia  at  Tau- 
ris  and  his  Tasso.  All  three  had  their  start- 
ing-point back  in  the  Frankfort  Epoch,  the 
time  of  the  poet's  supreme  creativity.  They 
were  carried  by  him  to  Weimar,  during  whose 
quiescent  Decennium  they  were  brooded 
over,  wrought  at,  but  in  the  end  lay  unfin- 
ished and  unfinishable.  Finally  they  were 
borne  by  him  to  Italy  and  put  through  the 
Italian  crucible  with  the  result  that  all  were 
completed  either  during  his  Journey  or  not 
long  after  his  return.  Thus  their  outward 
destiny  was  quite  the  same,  and  links  them 
together  in  a  joint  title,  that  of  Trilogy, 
which  means  in  general  three  parts  of  one 
comprehensive  theme. 

The  old  Greek  Trilogy  with  its  three  dra- 
mas turned  on  the  career  of  one  heroic  per- 
sonage, each  of  whose  three  distinctive 
phases  or  stages  was  made  the  subject  of  a 


288          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

play.  For  instance  the  Trilogy  of  Prome- 
theus revealed  the  Titan's  career  in  three 
different  dramas,  only  one  of  which  has  come 
down  to  us.  But  the  Trilogy  of  Aeschylus, 
called  the  Oresteia  from  its  central  character, 
who  is  Orestes,  has  been  preserved  entire. 
Now  in  the  Trilogy  of  Goethe,  as  we  shall 
call  it,  each  of  the  three  dramas*  has  its  own 
separate  story  and  its  own  separate  charac- 
ters, and  so  far  is  disconnected  from  the  rest. 
Still  their  unity,  is  Goethe  himself,  in  whom 
they  represent  three  lines  of  contemporane- 
ous development  rather  than  successive 
stages  of  his  spirits  unfolding.  Each  is  an 
evolution  running  parallel  to  the  others,  yet 
all  reveal  finally  one  character  of  whose  total 
life-poem  they  form  a  special  part.  Hence 
for  our  biography  the  present  Trilogy  is  but 
one  strain  or  canto  of  the  entire  song. 

In  what  order  should  the  three  dramas  be 
looked  at  and  studied,  and  finally  arranged 
as  related  to  one  another?  Biographers  have 
differed  about  the  question.  The  three  being 
essentially  synchronous  in  their  conception, 
growth  and  completion,  we  may  fall  back 
upon  their  inner  relation.  Egmont  in  our 
view  is  to  be  put  before  Iphigenia  though  it 
appeared  the  year  after  (1788).  It  naturally 
takes  its  place  as  the  first  member  of  the 
Trilogy;  it  still  has  many  reminders  of  its 


EGMONT.  289 

origin  in  the  volcanic  Frankfort  Epoch,  it  is 
less  Italianized  than  its  other  two  dramatic 
mates.  It  still  retains  its  old  egg-shell  of 
prose,  which  they  have  cast  off;  even  its  ex- 
ternal appearance  on  the  printed  page  recalls 
Gotz  with  its  mass  of  multitudinous  person- 
ages of  all  classes  commingled  high  and  low, 
its  sudden  changes  of  scene  and  its  detailed 
stage  directions.  The  style,  too,  though  much 
toned  down  and  classicized,  shows  many  a 
boulder  indicating  the  violent  upheaval  of  a 
former  era.  Accordingly  we  shall  look  at 
Egmont  first,  showing  more  the  preliminary 
stage  out  of  which  the  whole  Trilogy  has  de- 
veloped. 

EGMONT. 

This  is  one  of  Goethe 's  permanent  produc- 
tions, it  continues  to  be  played  upon  the 
stage  and  is  read  still  more  as  literature ;  be- 
sides, it  reveals  a  distinctive  phase  of  the 
poet's  total  evolution. 

I.  There  is  a  very  broad  historic  back- 
ground to  the  drama,  but  rather  indetermin- 
ate and  not  much  employed.  Still  it  is  that 
which  helps  very  decidedly  to  keep  the  work 
alive  today.  There  is  the  conflict  between  the 
foreign  Spaniard  and  the  native  Nether- 
lander— between  political  freedom  and  na- 
tional servitude,  between  the  rule  of  self-im- 


290          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

posed  law  and  the  reign  of  absolutism.  Still 
deeper  runs  the  religious  struggle  which  rises 
against  the  old  church  in  favor  of  the  inbreak- 
ing  Reformation.  Moreover,  there  is  the  at- 
tempt to  introduce  the  Inquisition  from 
Spain  which  the  Netherlanders  are  quite 
unanimous  in  resisting.  Thus  the  time-set- 
ting of  the  drama  is  thrown  back  into  the  up- 
heaving sixteenth  century,  when  the  whole 
German  world  of  the  North  had  the  tendency 
to  break  loose  from  the  Papacy,  and  from 
Southern  leading-strings,  to  make  a  fresh 
start  for  itself. 

The  drama  of  Egmont,  accordingly,  strikes 
one  note  of  that  perennial  racial  and  cultural 
conflict  which  began  far  back  in  old  Rome  al- 
ready before  the  Christian  Era,  and,  contin- 
uing through  some  two  thousand  years  is 
furiously  going  on  in  Europe  at  this  mo- 
ment (1915) — the  strife  between  the  Latin 
and  the  Teuton.  In  the  drama 's  phase  of  this 
millennial  conflict  the  two  sides  are  repre- 
sented by  the  Spaniard  and  the  Netherlander. 
Hence  it  comes  that  Germania  thrills  even 
now  to  the  representation  of  Egmont,  which 
touches  the  deepest  chords  of  her  folk-soul, 
throbbing  back  into  her  primeval  forests.  It 
is  worth  while  to  look  through  the  play  and 
observe  how  many  times  the  poet  reaches 
down  to  this  profoundest  substrate  of  Teu- 


EGMONT.  291 

tonic  consciousness,  and  sets  it  to  vibrating. 
In  the  here  presented  stage  of  the  wrestle  of 
the  two  races  and  civilizations,  Philip  II., 
King  of  Spain,  is  the  upholder  of  the  Latin 
element,  of  course  in  its  Spanish  form.  So 
we  hear  quite  from  the  start  secret  thrusts 
against  him  and  his  rule,  from  the  people, 
one  of  whom  says  in  the  first  scene,  ' l  a  Neth- 
erlander does  not  find  it  easy  to  drink  to  the 
health  of  his  Spanish  majesty  from  his 
heart. " 

The  prime  historic  fact  about  Count  Eg- 
mont  is  that  he  was  treacherously  seized  by 
the  Duke  of  Alva  and  beheaded  at  Brussels 
in  1568.  Philip  II.,  of  Spain,  one  of  the  gloom- 
iest, most  bigoted  tyrants  in  all  history,  suc- 
ceeded his  father,  Charles  V.,  as  King  of  the 
Netherlands  in  1555.  He  first  appoints  Mar- 
garet of  Parma,  his  half-sister,  regent,  and 
at  once  starts  trouble  by  enforcing  his  arbi- 
trary behest  in  matters  of  State  and  Religion 
through  a  foreign  army  upon  a  free-minded 
people.  But  the  regent  Margaret  is  too  leni- 
ent and  too  tolerant  for  the  monarch  of  pure 
absolutism,  and  so  she  resigns  in  1567  and 
the  pitiless  Alva  takes  her  place.  This  change 
of  the  regents  from  Margaret  to  Alva  marks 
the  turning  point  in  the  dramatic  action,  and 
signifies  the  doom  of  Egmont. 

We  should  not  leave  out  of  mind  the  his- 


292          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

toric  fact  that  Spain  at  this  time,  in  the  sev- 
enteenth century,  was  the  greatest  nation  on 
the  globe,  was  verily  filled  with  the  World- 
Spirit  as  no  other  people  of  the  time.  This 
its  deeds  show  in  multifarious  directions,  as 
well  as  its  limit-transcending  character.  It 
had  explored,  colonized  and  organized  Amer- 
ica. It  had  great  men,  a  great  literature, 
great  possessions.  So  we  say  that  the  World- 
Spirit  was  for  a  time  Spanish. 

Strangely  it's  king,  and  seemingly  its 
statesmen,  thought  their  call  was  to  annihi- 
late not  only  outer  institutional  freedom,  but 
the  souPs  inner  freedom,  the  conscience  it- 
self. The  Inquisition  sought  to  reach  men's 
inmost  conviction  with  its  hidden  power  and 
to  shape  that  by  outer  means.  Every  point 
of  faith  was  to  be  dictated  to  the  individual ; 
he  was  to  have  no  spiritual  being  of  his  own, 
but  to  be  moved  as  a  mere  automaton  of 
Church  and  State.  Thus  Spain  collided  with 
the  movement  of  the  age,  which  was  toing 
ing  forth  the  free  individual,  the  independent 
subjective  Self,  represented  in  the  North- 
Holland,  Germany,  England.  Naturally  she 
undid  herself  and  lost  her  own  soul,  and  thus 
ceased  producing  great  men, 

II.  Such  is  the  general  historic  back- 
ground which  Goethe  preserves  in  outline  and 
purport.  The  universal  nature  of  the  con- 


EGMONT.  293 

flict  he  never  lets  us  forget,  even  if  he  flings 
it  in  more  or  less  externally.  But  when  it 
comes  to  the  details  of  history,  he  alters  them 
in  every  way  to  suit  his  dramatic  purpose. 
For  instance,  the  real  Egmont  was  a  married 
man  with  numerous  children,  well  advanced 
in  middle  age  at  his  death;  he  was  not  the 
gay,  unmarried  Lothario  whom  Goethe  plays 
before  us.  He  exposed  himself  to  the  snare 
of  Alva  chiefly  through  anxiety  for  his  fam- 
ily, not  on  account  of  his  demonic  daring  of 
fate,  as  the  poet  portrays  him.  And  Count 
Hoorn,  who  was  executed  with  Egmont,  is  not 
mentioned,  for  a  good  artistic  reason.  Still 
more  profoundly  is  the  actual  historic  moti- 
vation set  aside.  Goethe's  Egmont  is  no 
great  leader  of  the  people  against  despotism, 
his  part  is  not  that  of  the  hero  slain  in  the 
struggle  for  freedom;  that  is  the  deed  of 
Orange,  who  is  dismissed  after  one  scene  of 
the  play  in  which  he  endeavors  to  forewarn 
his  associate  of  the  plot  laid  for  both.  But 
Egmont,  the  demonic  fate-defier,  marches 
straight  into  the  trap. 

Goethe  was  often  called  upon  to  defend 
these  alterations,  if  not  perversions  of  His- 
tory. He  said  long  afterwards  to  Eckermann : 
"If  I  had  made  Egmont  the  father  of  a  dozen 
children,  as  History  gives  him,  he  would  have 
appeared  absurd, "  So  the  poet  moulded  him 


294          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

over  "into  my  Egmont,  as  Clara  calls  him." 
That  is,  Goethe  makes  the  historical  Egmont 
over  into  Goethe,  the  young  lover  and  eri- 
trancer  of  women,  as  when  he  fascinated 
Frederika  and  Lili.  But  such  a  character 
must  also  have  its  environing  world,  and  ac- 
cordingly he  sets  it  down  in  the  midst  of  a 
great  revolutionary  epoch  more  than  two  cen- 
turies rearward  of  his  own  age.  So  we  read 
in  Egmont  what  part  Goethe  would  have 
played  in  that  mighty  religious  and  political 
upheaval.  He  would  have  cast  state  and 
church  out  of  his  career  largely,  deigning  in- 
deed a  few  side  glimpses  at  both,  but  he  would 
have  become  the  lover  amid  the  throes  of  bat- 
tle itself,  for  is  he  not  the  lover  supremely, 
our  Phileros  upon  this  earth? 

Suggestive,  too,  of  his  view  of  history  is 
this  passage  written  in  1785:  "I  have  often 
said  it  and  shall  again  often  repeat  that  the 
Causa  finalis  of  all  the  world's  conflicts  is  to 
furnish  material  to  dramatic  poetry,  for  the 
stuff  is  good  for  nothing  else."  Here  he  de- 
nies that  universal  History  has  any  end  or 
content  of  its  own;  it  exists  to  be  kneaded 
over  by  the  poet  into  his  drama.  "  Where- 
fore," he  asks,  "  should  a  poet  merely  copy 
the  historian?"  So  he  scoffs  at  the  historic 
fact  by  itself  as  incapable  of  poetic  presenta- 
tion. Indeed  he  declares  openly:  "No  person 


EGMONT.  295 

is  historic  for  the  poet, ' '  his  right  function  is 
to  take  certain  names  from  history  and  to 
pour  into  them  his  own  creations,  or  per- 
chance, himself.  Thus  he  certainly  has  done 
with  his  Egmont.  All  this,  however,  goes  to 
show  that  the  historic  sense  was  not  one  of 
Goethe's  gifts — a  point  which  we  shall  often 
have  to  note  in  the  course  of  his  life.  For 
nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  history  has 
its  own  goal  toward  which  it  is  working;  we 
may  say  that  it  contains  its  own  distinct  psy- 
chological evolution  as  well  as  the  individual 
person,  or  as  well  as  Goethe  himself,  and  thus 
is  capable  of  poetic  treatment  as  much  as  a 
man.  In  other  words  history  has  a  soul  quite 
as  have  you  and  I,  and  it  can  be  set  forth  dra- 
matically in  its  own  way,  as  Shakespeare  has 
done,  and  others  too,  notably  Schiller. 

We  have  the  advantage  of  Schiller's  criti- 
cisms of  this  drama  when  it  first  appeared. 
Many  things  in  it  were  duly  praised,  but  the 
censure  fell  upon  the  defective  historic  pres- 
entation of  Egmont  who,  as  connected  in  time 
and  fate  with  the  great  revolution,  ought  to 
be  shown  forth  as  its  hero,  marching  at  its 
head  and  fighting  its  battles,  winning  its  peo- 
ple by  the  charm  of  his  personality,  and  at 
last  perishing  for  its  principle.  It  is  true 
that  Egmont  talks  of  these  things,  but  does 
none  of  them;  is  none  of  them  in  the  drama, 


296          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

which  is,  therefore,  essentially  undramatic, 
leaving  out  the  great  institutional  act  of  the 
age  and  country.  So  Schiller  exclaims: 
' i  That  is  just  the  misfortune  that  we  are  com- 
pelled to  take  Egmont 's  services  upon  hear- 
say, while  his  shortcomings  we  see  with  our 
eyes."  The  truth  is  Egmont 's  weaknesses 
were  just  Goethe's  own,  namely,  those  of 
Phileros  dallying  with  love,  mid  the  very 
crash  of  a  world-historical  collision  in  whose 
jaws  he  gets  crushed  to  an  ill-timed  death. 
Yet  mark  again!  Goethe  making  his  hero 
tragic,  seems  to  free  himself  from  his  own 
tragedy,  and  lives  to  tell  the  story. 

We  are,  then,  to  note  Goethe's  limitation: 
he  could  not  write  an  historical  tragedy;  he 
always  makes  it  personal,  even  when  it  is  set 
down  in  the  midst  of  the  greatest  events  of 
historic  time.  In  Gotz  he  tried  hardest,  but 
only  half  succeeded  in  composing  a  drama  of 
history  after  the  pattern  of  Shakespeare.  In 
Egmont  we  find  everywhere  traces  of  imita- 
tion of  the  British  poet,  especially  of  Julius 
Caesar  which  so  emphatically  introduces  the 
People  like  Egmont.  But  the  outcome  is  very 
different.  Goethe  cannot  sink  himself  into 
the  event  objectively,  rather  he  sinks  it  into 
himself  subjectively. 

III.  What  then  is  Egmont  in  character 
and  deed?  Goethe  many  years  afterward,  in 


EGMONT.  297 

the  last  book  of  his  Autobiography,  felt  him- 
self called  upon  to  give  his  own  interpreta- 
tion of  his  work.  He  must  have  often  heard 
the  reproach,  during  the  long  contest  of  his 
people  against  Napoleon:  Why  did  you  not 
portray  for  us  a  national  hero  in  his  desper- 
ate fight  against  foreign  tyranny?  How  does 
it  come  that  you  did  not  give  to  your  coun- 
tryman a  Teutonic  Wilhelm  Tell,  or  even  a 
Herrmann  in  his  struggle  for  freedom 
against  the  Latin  oppressor!  Especially  at 
the  time  of  the  war  of  Gerraan  Liberation 
when  all  Teutonia  rose  in  a  prodigeous 
ground-swell  to  throw  off  her  chains,  must 
the  poet  have  felt  the  national  shortcoming 
of  his  work.  Orange,  the  real  leader,  is  curtly 
dismissed  from  the  drama,  with  one  scene, 
while  Egmont,  incapable  of  leadership,  is 
limned  to  over-fullness  in  all  his  native  paral- 
ysis through  love  ?s  sweet  revelry. 

The  principle  which  the  poet  invokes  for  in- 
terpretation as  well  as  for  self-defense,  is 
what  he  calls  the  Demonic,  word  and  concep- 
tion suggested  doubtless  by  the  famous 
demon  of  Socrates.  It  was  a  mysterious 
super-sensible  Power  of  which  he  says : 
"Everything  which  limits  us  appeared  pen- 
etrable to  it ;  with  the  necessary  elements  of 
our  existence  it  seemed  to  deal ;  it  could  com- 
press Time  and  expand  Space.  In  the  Im- 


298          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

possible  alone  did  it  appear  to  find  its  satis- 
faction; the  Possible  it  spurned  from  itself 
with  contempt. "  A  superhuman  energy, 
then,  descends  into  the  human  and  lifts  it  to 
the  mighty  performance;  the  Overman  takes 
possession  of  the  finite  man  and  exalts  him 
to  his  highest  achievement.  But  why  should 
not  this  demonic  obsession  seize  its  recipient 
and  elevate  him  into  the  victorious  defender 
of  the  Fatherland?  Only  one  reason:  that 
would  not  have  been  Goethe,  he  could  not  do 
it  by  the  necessity  of  his  birthright.  So  he 
takes  away  from  his  Egmont  all  his  limiting 
relations  of  life,  those  of  his  family  and 
largely  those  of  his  country  and  of  his  time; 
he  reduces  him  (so  he  says)  quite  to  the 
single  untrammeled  individual,  endowed, 
however,  with  a  demonic  charm  of  personal- 
ity which  neither  man  nor  woman  can  resist. 
Thus  Goethe  looks  back  at  his  Egmont  or 
really  at  himself  in  his  Autobiography: 
"Having  set  him  free  from  all  restraining 
conditions,  I  gave  him  an  unbridled  joy  of 
life,  a  boundless  self-confidence,  a  gift  of 
drawing  all  men  to  himself  by  his  personal 
fascination,  and  hence  of  winning  the  favor 
of  the  people,  the  secret  inclination  of  the 
Princess,  the  passionate  devotion  of  a 
maiden,  the  friendly  participation  of  a 
shrewd  politician,  and  even  the  strong  re- 


.4- 
EGMONT.  299 

gard  of  his  murderer's  own  son."  So  the 
poet  recounts  out  of  his  drama  the  striking 
instances  of  Egmont's  demonic  power  of  fas- 
cination— it  is  the  young  Goethe  living  again 
through  the  eyes  of  the  old  Goethe.  Still 
there  was  one  man  whom  the  all-charmer 
could  not  put  under  his  spell:  it  was  the 
sombre  Satanic  Alva,  the  new  regent  from 
Spain.  Here  then  he  runs  upon  his  tragic 
limit ;  the  moment  he  finds  the  personality  he 
cannot  fascinate,  that  moment  means  his 
doom,  he  is  judged  to  perish. 

At  this  point  we  may  see  what  the  poet 
sought  to  do  in  his  Egmont.  It  portrays  the 
tragedy  of  the  Demonic  which  at  last  drives 
upon  a  Power  mightier  than  itself  and  goes 
down.  But  what  pertinence  has  this  to  the 
poet's  own  career!  Goethe  finished  his  Eg- 
mont practically  in  Italy  as  he  was  looking 
back  and  taking  a  survey  of  his  former  stage, 
that  of  Frankfort.  What  a  conqueror  he  had 
been,  especially  as  Phileros,  the  All-lover! 
He  began  his  drama  already  in  Frankfort, 
but  could  not  finish  it;  worked  at  it  in  Wei- 
mar— unfinishable  still.  But  the  clear  Italian 
atmosphere  had  clarified  his  soul's  vision  till 
he  could  see  himself  in  his  complete  round; 
now  he  can  bring  to  a  close  his  work,  behold- 
ing himself  as  demonic  Phileros  to  be  under 
judgment.  The  superlative  charm  of  the 


300          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

Overman  working  through  him,  after  untold 
successes,  begets  the  Fate-defying  insolence 
which  hurls  him  to  his  end.  But  this  supernal 
energy  gave  him  his  poetic  power,  being  the 
source  of  all  his  Titanic  works;  still  it  se- 
creted a  negative  backstroke  which  means 
tragedy. 

In  the  drama  of  Gotz,  which  in  many  re- 
spects is  cognate  with  the  present  play,  we 
behold  the  enchantress,  Adelheid,  the  woman 
endowed  with  the  demonic  power  of  fascina- 
tion. But  in  Egmont  it  is  the  man  who  is  the 
world-charmer,  and  cannot  in  fact  help  his 
gift — really  it  is  Goethe  himself  revealed  in 
one  phase  of  his  Genius.  But  Adelheid 's 
demon  is  a  destroyer,  Satanic,  negative  to  all 
instituted  order,  which  she  would  fling  to  the 
fiends  through  her  fiendish  might  of  pas- 
sion's enchantment.  That  cannot  be  said  of 
Egmont,  rather  is  he  inactive  in  a  great 
cause,  hamstrung  by  his  demon,  and  so  fails 
just  through  his  supreme  gift  to  be  the  prac- 
tical hero  of  his  age. 

IV.  In  the  evolution  of  Goethe's  person- 
ality, Egmont  means  the  tragedy  of  the  De- 
monic when  allowed  to  run  to  its  uncon- 
trolled fullness.  It  is  the  classic  Goethe  look- 
ing back -at  and  measuring  the  fate  of  Goe- 
the the  Titan,  who  embodies  this  demonic  en- 
ergy. Some  such  tragic  outcome  he  must 


EGMONT.  301 

have  forefelt  even  amid  all  his  Titanic  ex- 
cesses. He  could  not  help  the  uncanny  sen- 
sation that  he  was  dashing  his  head  against 
the  walls  of  the  universal  order,  but  the  uni- 
verse is  larger  than  any  terrestrial  Titan, 
and  will  in  the  end  subsume  him  even  through 
death. 

Then  comes  the  question,  and  it  came  to 
Goethe  already  at  Weimar :  Canst  thou  con- 
trol thy  demon,  confining  it  to  its  due  sphere 
of  activity?  Mighty  is  its  power  indeed;  it 
is  just  the  original  elemental  energy  of  the 
great  individual — but  can  he  harness  it  and 
make  it  do  the  work  of  the  world?  Such  is 
the  primordial  problem  of  the  young  Genius, 
restless  at  the  limits  put  upon  him  by  birth. 
Hence  so  often  he  goes  to  pieces  in  youth. 
He  sinks  in  a  colossal  protest,  though  he 
make  a  huge  hubbub  and  arouse  terror  and 
pity  at  his  untimely  fate.  It  is  a  peculiar 
fact  of  literary  history  that  Goethe's  great- 
est English  contemporaries  in  poetry,  Byron, 
Shelley,  and  even  Keats,  sank  to  death  while 
young  and  still  in  their  demonic  stage, 
Heaven-storming  and  unreconciled  with  the 
World's  Order,  which  they  would  pull  down 
over  their  heads — unless  Keats  be  the  excep- 
tion with  his  unique  original  harmony  of 
soul,  as  if  spheral.  But  Goethe  passed 
through  the  demonic  stage,  came  out  of  it, 


302          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

and  in  the  Italian  Trilogy  is  singing  of  it  and 
its  solution — especially  is  that  the  theme  of 
our  present  Egmont. 

Goethe,  being  a  poet,  made  his  demon  write 
poetry,  which  at  first  demonic  in  its  defiance, 
finally  becomes  the  composer  of  its  own  trag- 
edy. Thus  the  poet  saves  himself.  The  uni- 
versal Genius  writing  tragedy,  shows  up 
some  finite  phase  of  himself,  and  thereby 
transcends  his  own  fate  by  portraying  it  to 
its  last  thrust.  Egmont  also  is  a  confession 
of  the  author  concerning  his  own  limitation, 
which  he  could  not  quite  overcome  in  writ  till 
he  had  taken  the  Italian  discipline,  even  if 
little  of  this  can  be  found  directly  in  his  play. 

V.  Egmont  as  Goethe  must  likewise  be 
Phileros,  and  hence  he  has  to  have  his  coun- 
terpart in  a  woman,  who  is  in  the  present 
drama  taken  from  the  ranks  of  the  people, 
Clara,  the  heroine  of  the  play.  The  demonic 
lover,  Egmont,  coming  into  Clara 's  presence, 
demonizes  her,  so  to  speak,  fills  her  with  the 
same  defiant  power  which  possesses  him. 
She  has  another  suitor,  Brackenburg,  wor- 
thy, devoted,  favored  by  the  good,  quiet 
mother,  but  he  is  the  undemonic  lover,  hence 
an  impossible  mate  for  the  woman  in  her  de- 
monic obsession  for  Egmont.  Doubtless,  if 
she  had  never  met  him,  she  would  have  be- 
come an  honest  burgher's  wife,  borne  and 


EGMONT.  303 

reared  his  many  Dutch  children,  and  have 
passed  off  life's  stage  in  unfamed  worth  and 
unheroized  of  the  world's  literature.  But 
now  in  her  soul  Egmont 's  demon  has  become 
lodged,  and  is  working  at  highest  intensity, 
which  makes  her  greater  and  more  heroic 
than  even  Egmont,  for  she  has  not  his  inac- 
tive limit  of  character.  When  he  is  captured 
by  the  Spanish,  she  summons  the  people  to 
aid  in  his  rescue,  yea  to  rise  now  and  throw 
off  the  oppressor's  yoke,  headed  by  Egmont, 
who  is,  however,  wholly  incapable  of  any 
such  national  deed,  as  little  as  Goethe  him- 
self was.  Still  the  poet  has  endowed  his  best 
female  characters  with  lofty  traits  which  he 
himself  did  not  possess — hence  the  oft-re- 
peated remark  that  Goethe's  women  are  of  a 
higher  order  than  his  men — they  are  his 
ideals,  his  exemplars — The  Eternal-Womanly 
draws  us  onward — the  us  being  especially 
Goethe  himself.  So  Clara  is  the  true  heroine 
of  the  play  and  rightly  its  favorite  charac- 
ter. Still  she  is  whelmed  into  the  tragedy  of 
her  lover  just  through  her  demonic,  death- 
defying  love,  across  which  also  flashes  mo- 
mentarily another  love,  that  of  country,  in 
the  grand  crisis  of  her  people. 

In  this  drama  by  way  of  comparison  we 
often  recall  Schiller,  whose  Wilhelm  Tell, 
placed  in  similar  circumtances  politically 


304    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

with  those  of  Egmont,  makes  such  a  different 
impression,  and  has  had  such  a  different 
fame.  And  Clara  brings  up  the  Maid  of  Or- 
leans as  Schiller's  model  of  representing  the 
heroic  woman.  The  two  poets,  seen  in  this 
aspect  of  their  work,  are  two  sides  of  one 
greater  whole,  or  two  opposite  tendencies 
which  are  destined  to  be. united  in  the  su- 
preme Epoch  of  both. 

VI.  Significant  is  the  fact  that  the  people 
appear  four  times  in  the  drama,  being  a  kind 
of  personage  of  the  play  from  beginning  to 
end.  They  are  portrayed  vividly  as  a  mass, 
also  separated  into  four  or  five  popular  types. 
Still,  as  a  whole,  they  are  listless,  sodden, 
unheroic,  too.  Perchance  this  was  Goethe's 
unfortunate  idea  of  the  folk,  even  later  of  his 
own  German  folk,  although  at  times  he  bris- 
tled up  into  sharp  denials  of  such  a  view.  But 
in  Egmont  the  Netherlanders  are  not  truly 
shown  forth  as  they  actually  were  in  history ; 
they  did  rise  against  the  Spanish  yoke  in  long, 
national  struggle  and  throw  it  off,  after  a 
contest  lasting  a  hundred  years,  as  it  is  some- 
times reckoned.  In  this  drama  Alva  remains 
the  dark  remorseless,  irresistible  power 
crushing  Dutch  liberty,  but  he  in  history 
failed  and  gave  up  his  task.  So  again  we  see 
that  history  was  but  a  foil  for  Goethe's  po- 
etry, having  no  right  in  itself,  indeed  no  prin- 


EGMONT.  305 

ciple.  The  same  fact  we  notice  in  Goethe's 
treatment  of  the  French  Revolution  which 
ran  through  so  many  years  of  his  mature 
life;  its  significance  he  never  could  quite  re- 
alize. 

The  question  will  always  be  asked  why  did 
not  the  poet  in  Italy  transform  his  prose  Eg- 
mont  into  the  blank-verse  of  poetry,  as  he 
did  with  the  two  other  dramas  of  the  Trilogy. 
He  was  in  the  classical  mood  and  was  cer- 
tainly master  of  its  metrical  expression. 
Moreover,  he  insisted  strongly  in  a  letter  to 
Schiller  that  "all  dramatic  works  should  be 
rhythmical, "  that  is,  should  have  some  form 
of  measured  melody.  This  declaration,  how- 
ever, was  made  several  years  after  his  Italian 
trip.  As  Goethe  himself  has  given  no 
grounds  why  he  should  except  Egmont  from 
his  classic  transformation  in  form  and  meter, 
we  are  compelled  to  dig  up  some  reason  for 
ourselves.  First,  we  may  note  that  the 
theme  is  Northern,  Teutonic,  anti-classic, 
portraying  a  conflict  with  a  Latinized  people 
who  spoke  a  Latinized  tongue  and  possessed 
a  Latinized  culture  and  civilization.  But  at 
present  Goethe's  face  is  turned  southward, 
he  is  seeking  to  appropriate  the  Mediterran- 
ean life  and  art,  he  has  changed  for  the  nonce 
from  Northerner  to  Southerner.  Hence  he 
could  not  help  feeling  discordant  with  the 


306    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

purport  of  Egmont,  and  of  itself  the  theme 
would  not  classicize,  like  Iphigenia  or  Tasso, 
both  of  which  subjects  belonged  already  to 
the  soil  of  the  South  in  their  origin.  So  Goe- 
the corrected  much  in  his  work,  but  could  not 
metamorphose  it  into  a  classic  drama.  The 
same  experience  he  had  with  his  Faust  which 
he  took  along  and  hoped  to  complete  in  Italy. 
How  could  he?  For  Faust  is  also  Teutonic, 
sprung  of  a  Northern  legend  and  a  Northern 
consciousness,  and  thus  was  profoundly  in- 
harmonious with  Goethe's  Italian  atunement. 
So  he  has  to  bring  back  his  Faust  to  its  Ger- 
man home  still  unfinished,  and  wait  for  an- 
other epochal  mood,  in  which  he  can  again 
Teutonize  his  poem. 

Still  there  is  evidence  that  he  did  not  have 
an  easy  time  in  working  at  his  Egmont  while 
in  Italy.  Already  in  January,  1787,  he  writes 
from  Eome :  ' '  Now  I  am  going  to  tackle  Eg- 
mont/' and  he  hopes  soon  to  finish  it  with 
Tasso  and  Faust.  But  several  months  pass 
and  we  hear  that  "the  fourth  Act  will  soon 
be  done."  Still  there  is  delay  and  he  has  to 
whip  himself  to  his  task,  which  opens  not  a 
smooth  path  but  rather  thorny.  At  last,  how- 
ever, September  5th,  he  can  announce  its  com- 
pletion and  send  it  to  his  friends  in  Weimar. 
He  adds  an  utterance  of  his  great  relief:  "It 
was  an  unspeakably  hard  task,  which  I  never 


EGMONT.  307 

could  have  accomplished  without  an  unlimit- 
ed freedom  of  life  and  mind, ' '  which  he  found 
of  course  in  Italy.  ,But  the  work  had  to  be 
done,  even  if  it  often  went  against  the  grain. 
In  a  later  letter  from  Rome  he  emphasizes 
once  more  the  difficulty.  "Let  anyone  im- 
agine what  it  means  to  take  in  hand  a  work 
which  was  written  twelve  years  earlier,  and 
to  complete  it  without  writing  it  over. ' '  This 
indicates  that  he  followed  the  original  prose 
copy  going  back  to  1775  at  Frankfort. 

As  before  said,  Egmont  is  deeply  twined 
with  Gotz  in  form  and  significance,  as  well 
as  in  the  time  of  origin.  Still  it  shows  decid- 
edly the  influence  of  the  Weimar  Epoch,  dur- 
ing whose  ten  years  it  lay  germinating,  but 
unable  to  flower  out.  We  recollect  that  Gotz 
flung  himself  into  rebellion  against  the  es- 
tablished social  order,  defying  even  the  Em- 
peror. But  Egmont  will  preserve  the  exist- 
ing institutions  of  his  land  against  the  tyran- 
nical foreign  oppressor.  Thus  he  is  not  a 
revolutionist  in  the  sense  that  Gotz  is ;  rather 
is  he  a  conservator  of  his  country's  transmit- 
ted rights.  This  is  in  accord  with  the  insti- 
tutional training .  which  he  received  at  Wei- 
mar after  his  Frankfort  eruption  against  the 
ordered  world.  Still  Egmont  talks  patriot- 
ism rather  than  acts  it,  he  proclaims  his  peo- 
ple 's  independence,  but  does  little  for  it;  his 


308     GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

will  is  paralyzed  by  what  Goethe  calls  the 
Demonic,  which  seems  also  a  later  elabora- 
tion. To  be  sure  no  copy  has  been  preserved 
of  the  first  Frankfort  Egmont,  or  of  the  sec- 
ond Weimar  Egmont  which  was  probably 
the  one  which  Goethe  worked  over  in 
Italy.  No  five  different  redactions  of  Eg- 
mont exist  as  they  do  of  Iphigenia,  showing 
various  gradations  in  its  evolution.  Still, 
compared  with  Gotz,  it  bears  the  impress  of 
Weimar.  Thus  it  is  a  kind  of  overture  start- 
ing with  Frankfort,  but  sending  repeated 
strains  through  Weimar  to  Italy. 

Also  there  may  be  found  a  link  of  connec- 
tion between  the  two  dramas  of  Egmont  and 
Iphigenia  at  Tauris  in  the  characters  of  the 
two  women.  Both  are  endowed  with  the 
spirit  of  willing  sacrifice  of  themselves  to 
what  they  deem  their  supreme  end,  and  there- 
in are  heroic.  Clara  gives  her  life  unflinch- 
ingly to  her  love  and  her  cause,  and  perishes 
immediately  through  her  deed;  she  dies  a 
sacrifice.  But  Iphigenia  lives  a  sacrifice,  and 
devotes  the  long  years  of  banishment  to  the 
uplift  of  her  human  environment  till  the  day 
dawns  for  her  return  home.  Her  work  and 
character  as  presented  by  the  poet  we  are 
to  consider  next. 


IPHIGENIA  AT  TAURIS.  309 


IPHIGENIA  AT  TAUEIS. 

This  is  the  only  drama  of  the  present  Tril- 
ogy which  is  based  upon  a  Mythus,  a  story 
elaborated  by  the  people  which  shows  man  in 
some  connection  with  the  Upper  Powers,  the 
individual  in  relation  to  the  providential 
order  as  conceived  by  the  age.  The  Mythus 
of  which  Iphigenia  is  a  very  important  mem- 
ber is  Greek,  even  early  Greek,  having 
sprung  originally  from  the  primal  conscious- 
ness of  Greece,  since  it  reaches  back  of  the 
Trojan  war  into  the  shadowy  aforetime. 

When  Iphigenia  tells  Thoas,  the  King  of 
Barbary,  who  is  wooing  her  for  marriage :  "I 
am  of  the  race  of  Tantalus, "  she  intends  to 
frighten  him  off  through  the  fate-smitten 
character  of  her  ancestors  who  form  a  dread- 
ful line  of  cruelties  and  impieties  reaching 
up  to  the  very  seat  of  the  Gods.  Tantalus, 
son  of  Zeus  and  of  a  human  mother,  was  a 
favorite  of  the  Olympians,  being  admitted  to 
their  table,  and  sharing  in  the  divine  coun- 
sels and  purposes,  though  only  a  mor- 
tal. But  he  is  declared  to  have  betrayed  their 
secrets  to  men  and  also  to  have  stolen  nectar 
and  ambrosia  from  their  feasts,  and  to  have 
brought  the-  divine  food  and  drink  to  our 
lower  world.  That  was  a  great  sacrilege 


310          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

though  a  philanthropic  action;  the  stern  de- 
cree followed:  Tantalus  "for  his  pride  and 
treachery,  as  the  poets  sing,  was  hurled  from 
Jove's  table  down  to  the  disgrace  of  old  Tar- 
tarus, "  the  dark  realm  below  where  the 
other  violators  of  Olympic  majesty  atone  for 
their  offenses.  Iphigenia  adds :  "Alas!  and 
his  whole  race  must  bear  the  hate  of  the 
Gods."  Thus  she  proclaims  herself  a  Tan- 
talid  with  a  divine  curse  laid  upon  her  from 
birth. 

As  the  love  of  Thoas  is  not  terrified  by  this 
record  of  her  first  ancestor,  she  continues  her 
account  of  the  horrors  and  guilty  deeds  done 
by  three  generations  of  the  progeny  of  Tan- 
talus— Pelops,  Atreus  and  Thyestes,  Aga- 
memnon son  of  Atreus — till  the  line  of  bloody 
ferocities  ended  in  herself  who  was  sacri- 
ficed by  her  own  father,  as  far  as  his  inten- 
tion went,  at  Aulis  to  the  Goddess  Diana. 
"But  the  Goddess  was  reconciled,  did  not 
wish  my  blood,  and  rescued  me  in  a  cloud." 
Thus  she  was  conveyed  to  Tauris  in  whose 
temple  she  awoke  from  death.  "I  am  she 
herself,  Iphigenia."  Thus  she  reveals  her- 
self along  with  the  taint  of  her  blood  and  its 
hereditary  curse — the  motive  being  to  dis- 
suade the  barbarian  King  from  his  suit,  as 
she  wished  to  return  to  Greece,  which  was 
her  heart's  deepest  love  and  longing.  Still 


IPHIGENIA  AT  TAURIS.  311 

Thoas  is  not  deterred,  he  renews  his  pro- 
posal; if  refused  he  threatens  to  relapse  to 
his  old  barbarism  and  to  sacrifice  some 
strangers  who  have  just  arrived  upon  his 
coast.  That  would  be  quite  the  undoing  of 
all  her  work  of  all  these  years,  for  truly  she 
has  been  the  Greek  Missionary  to  the  bar- 
barous world. 

Thus  the  poet  in  the  first  Act  of  his  drama, 
brings  down  the  Mythus  of  the  Tantalids  to 
the  beginning  of  the  Trojan  War,  of  whose 
course  and  outcome  Iphigenia  knows  nothing, 
since  it  has  wholly  taken  place  during  her 
stay  at  Tauris.  The  continuation  she  hears 
in  the  next  Act  from  Pylades,  one  of  the 
newly  arrived  strangers,  who  has  come  to 
the  temple  and  finds  there  a  priestess  talking 
Greek.  She  learns  from  him  about  the  fall 
of  Troy,  the  return  of  her  father  Agamem- 
non and  his  death  at  the  hands  of  his  wife 
Clytemnestra  aided  by  her  paramour  Aegis- 
thus.  Thus  she  hears  a  new  chapter  of  the 
horrors  of  the  House  of  Tantalus,  her  moth- 
er's vengeance  wreaked  upon  her  father  for 
her  sake.  In  a  later  Act  she  is  told  of  the 
fate  of  her  mother  slain  by  the  son  Orestes, 
her  brother  who  has  come  to  Tauris  hounded 
by  the  Furies  and  seeking  release  from  them 
by  doing  a  work  of  atonement  for  his  guilt 
which  is  to  be  brought  about  through  her 


312    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

mediation.  Thus  we  are  told  the  long  venge- 
ful story  of -the  House  of  Tantalus,  blood- 
stained especially  with  the  gore  of  its  own 
kindred. 

Such  is  the  mythical  substrate  of  the  whole 
drama  which  permeates  its  structure  through 
and  through  into  every  living  corpuscle  of 
its  organism.  In  no  other  poem  of  Goe- 
the has  a  Mythus  been  so  completely 
wrought  out  and  interwoven  into  the  fab- 
ric of  his  imagination.  Not  even  Faust, 
though  based  on  a  legend  of  his  native 
land,  is  so  pervasively  mythical  as  this 
old  Greek  tale  in  the  hands  of  the  poet. 
Moreover  it  seems  to  us  the  most  carefully 
and  cunningly  constructed  of  Goethe 's  works. 
Naturally  we  ask  why  has  the  poet  such  a 
persistent  interest  in  that  old  sanguinary 
record  of  domestic  fatalities?  As  he  never 
wrote  anything,  so  he  says,  without  its  being 
drawn  from  his  own  deepest  experience,  we 
grope  for  the  connection  between  the  drama 
of  Iphigenia  and  what  lurked  far  down,  per- 
haps unconsciously,  in  the  secret  depths  of 
his  being. 

It  is  generally  agreed  that  the  conception 
of  the  work  goes  back  to  the  Frankfort 
Quadrennium,  that  Epoch  of  his  greatest 
creative  energy.  Critics  have  assigned  its 
first  start  to  the  year  1776,  some  ten  years 


IPHIGENIA  AT  TAURI8?  313 

before  its  final  completed  form.  Of  its  earl- 
ier stages  we  have  no  less  than  four  different 
shapes  upon  which  the  investigators  have 
spent  a  good  deal  of  discussion.  The  first 
theatrical  representation  in  prose  is  usually 
dated  April  6,  1779,  at  Weimar,  in  which 
Goethe  took  the  part  of  Orestes  and  Corona 
Schroeter  that  of  Iphigenia.  The  appearance 
as  well  as  the  acting  of  Goethe  in  this  part 
roused  great  astonishment  in  the  audience. 
He  threw  a  personal  power  and  emotion  in- 
to the  role  so  that  it  was  then  said :  Lo,  he  is 
Orestes.  Ever  since  he  has  been  more  or 
less  identified  with  that  character  by  inter- 
preters of  the  play. 

Here  again  we  impinge  on  the  fact  that  this 
poem  also  is  confession  wrung  from  him  by 
his  sense  of  guilt,  the  atonement  for  which 
he  seeks  to  obtain  through  his  writing. 
Goethe,  taken  at  his  word  in  general,  would 
never  have  portrayed  Orestes  pursued  by  the 
Furies  unless  he  himself  had  been  pursued 
in  the  same  manner.  In  a  letter  of  1775  (al- 
ready cited)  we  may  hear  his  sigh  of  pun- 
ishment: "Perhaps  the  invisible  scourge  of 
the  Furies  will  soon  lash  me  again  from  my 
native  land."  Thus  he  had  realized  in  his 
own  person  the  soul-harassing  conception  of 
Orestes  years  before  the  first  known  copy  of 
Iphigenia.  The  thought  must  have  been  long 


314          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

familiar  to  him,  possibly  from  his  boyhood 
when  he  read  the  Greek  tragic  poets  in  his 
father 's  library  along  with  the  woeful  tale  of 
Tantalus  and  the  Tantalids.  In  his  speech 
at  the  Shakespeare  festival  (October  1771) 
he  ejaculates  an  admiring  exclamation  to  the 
English  poet:  "If  thou  wert  Orestes,  how 
delighted  would  I  be  to  play  with  thine  the 
lesser  part  of  a  Pylades."  Evidently  the 
theme  of  his  IpJiigenia  at  Tauris  had  taken 
deep  hold  of  Goethe  already  in  his  youth. 
More  than  ten  years,  yea  more  than  fif- 
teen years  had  this  subject  been  fermenting 
in  his  mind,  or  more  especially  in  his  con- 
science. The  facts  and  his  own  utterances, 
therefore,  would  seem  to  show  that  ever  since 
his  Strasburg  time,  when  he  met,  wooed  and 
abandoned  Frederika  the  image  of  Orestes 
hounded  by  the  guilt-avenging  Eumenides, 
had  lodged  in  his  soul  and  could  not  be  banned 
except  by  his  pen,  that  wonderful  instrument 
of  his  expiation  through  contrition,  confes- 
sion, and  works  meet  for  repentance,  one  of 
which  works  was  just  this  confessional  poem 
of  Ipliigenia.  Hence  it  has  taken  such  a  sig- 
nificant place  in  his  total  life-poem,  being 
read,  studied,  and  more  deeply  felt  than  any 
other  of  his  dramas,  excepting  Faust.  But 
it  is  not  well  adapted  for  external  repre- 
sentation on  the  stage,  it  is  an  inward-turn- 


. 

IPHIGENIA  AT  TAURIS.  315 

ing  drama,  its  appeal  is  directly  to  the  soul 
alone,  being  an  experience  of  the  spirit  which 
communes  with  the  spirit. 

Undoubtedly  Goethe  had  done  no  crime 
like  a  mother's  murder,  and  so  his  deed, 
whatever  it  may  have  been,  has  a  different 
character  from  that  of  Orestes.  Still  the  of- 
fence against  conscience  must  have  been  very 
actively  present,  else  such  throes  of  remorse 
would  have  little  meaning.  From  this  and 
other  striking  instances  we  come  to  the  con- 
clusion that  Goethe  must  have  had  a  keen 
sense  of  guilt,  especially  in  certain  directions, 
though  he  is  generally  regarded  as  little 
capable  of  the  feeling  of  sin.  But  we  have 
his  word  and  the  proof  that  all  his  litera- 
ture, particularly  his  greatest  and  most  con- 
vincing literature,  springs  from  his  contrite 
heart  for  some  violation,  which  it  is  just  the 
function  of  his  artistic  word  to  expiate.  Such 
is  doubtless  the  ultimate  view  to  be  taken  of 
Goethe's  writ:  it  is  remedial,  purificatory, 
purgatorial;  the  author,  like  Dante,  goes 
through  a  realm  of  guilt  and  suffering  in 
person,  and  tells  of  it  for  his  own  redemption 
and  that  of  others  perchance  like  him.  Yet, 
unlike  Dante,  he  does  not  relegate  such  a 
penitential  journey  to  the  future  state  of 
man,  but  he  places  it  here  and  now  in  this 
life — a  journey  to  be  made  in  some  form 


316  GOETHE'S*  LIFE-POEM —PART  SECOND. 

daily,  yearly  by  every  son  of  Adam.  Such 
we  may  deem  the  ultimate  purpose  of  his 
books,  though  they  have  other  lesser  and 
more  superficial  meanings. 

It  was  in  classic  Italy  that  Iphigenia  re- 
ceived the  final  form  in  harmony  with  the 
locality  and  its  artistic  tradition.  In  the 
poet's  letters  from  Italy  we  trace  his  strong 
inner  push  to  finish  just  this  work  first.  At 
Lake  Guarda  we  find  him  already  busy  with 
it,  as  soon  as  he  has  descended  the  Alps  and 
touched  Italian  soil.-  At  Verona  we  get  an 
inkling  of  the  intensity  of  his  Muse  when  he 
says  he  has  written  the  live-long  day  on  his 
poem.  Finally  he  reports  it  completed  at 
Eome  in  December,  1786,  and  sends  a  copy  to 
Herder  who  has  helped  him  with  advice.  It 
was  published  in  1787,  and  therewith  Goethe 
was  quit  of  his  long  brooding  over  the  work, 
which  he  had  so  often  rewritten.  From  prose 
it  has  been  transformed  into  blank-verse, 
doubtless  after  the  model  of  Shakespeare, 
and  is  one  of  the  great  masterpieces  of  versi- 
fication whose  deep  underlying  harmony  is  a 
resonance  of  the  spirit  of  the  peom,  that  of 
atonement  and  reconciliation.  No  Titanism, 
no  eruption,  though  there  is  passion  enough 
underneath  the  calm  exterior. 

And  this  suggests  the  meaning  of  the  work 
in  the  evolution  Goethe's  career.  It  should 


IPHIGENIA  AT  TAURIS.  317 

be  taken  as  the  artistic  counterpart  and  con- 
trast of  the  Titanic  upheavals  of  the  Frank- 
fort Epoch.  It  may  be  true  that  Tantalus  is 
not  spoken  of  as  a  Titan  by  ancient  writers, 
so  the  learned  commentators  declare;  still 
he  commits  a  Titanic  offence  in  defiance  of 
the  Gods,  and  is  whelmed  into  murky  Tar- 
tarus like  the  other  great  Titans  of  fable. 
And  then  his  progeny,  the  Tantalids,  are  co- 
lossal in  their  deeds  of  guilt,  whose  mon- 
strous line  reaches  down  to  Iphigenia  the 
priestess  at  Tauris.  Now  it  is  her  function 
and  object  to  put  an  end  to  this  ever-beget- 
ting series  of  monstrosities,  through  her  own 
life  and  sacrifice  as  well  as  through  the  ex- 
piation of  the  crime  of  Orestes.  Thus  Goethe 
poetizes  his  grand  transition  out  of  his  for- 
mer Epoch  into  his  present  classic  mood  of 
harmony  and  reconciliation.  Moreover  the 
mediatrix  who  performed  for  him  personally 
this  act  of  mediation  is  pointed  out,  also  a 
woman,  Frau  Von  Stein.  In  his  letters  to 
her  he  has  often  hinted  her  mediatorial  func- 
tion for  his  passion-torn  life.  He  declares 
that  she  knew  him  better  than  he  knew  him- 
self. That  was,  of  course,  in  the  earlier  Wei- 
mar days  of  his  love.  And  it  was  in  these 
days  that  he  wrought  out  and  lived  out,  yea 
acted  out  his  drama  of  Iphigenia,  which  cen- 
ters upon  the  priestly  woman  whose  remedial 


318    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

power  put  an  end  to  the  curse  of  the  Tan- 
talids,  though  she  herself  was  a  Tantalid, 
and  it  would  seem,  a  drop  of  the  old  inherited 
poison  remained  in  her  bosom. 

This  very  suggestive  point  is  indicated  by 
Iphigenia  in  communing  with  herself  (Act  4, 
Scene  5,)  when  she  prays  that  she  may  not 
relapse  to  the  old  Titanic  defiance:  "May 
the  deep  hate  of  the  old  Gods,  the  Titans,  not 
at  last  sprout  afresh  in  my  bosom  against 
you,  Olympians,  and  tear  my  tender  breast 
with  the  claws  of  a  vulture. "  So  she  seems 
to  identify  herself  with  the  Titans,  the  old 
revolters  against  Zeus  and  his  new  order. 
But  the  main  fact  is  she  feels  that  she  can 
backslide,  and  again  become  herself  a  Tan- 
talid, interlinking  in  the  hate-forged  chain  of 
her  family's  guilt  and  retribution,  whose 
ever-repeated  clash  of  bloody  horrors  she  has 
sought  to  cleanse  and  atone  "with  pure  hand 
and  pure  heart "  by  her  long  priestly  dedica- 
tion in  a  strange  land.  Still  further  the  ques- 
tion arises,  did  Frau  Von  Stein  ever  have  any 
such  relapse,  she  being  the  supposed  living 
model  of  Iphigenia  in  the  master 's  workshop  1 
And  did  the  poet  forefeel  in  her  character 
that  from  love  she  could  drop  back  into  hate, 
to  be  sure  under  strong  provocation,  and 
could  turn  from  the  priestly  mediatrix  to  the 
cursing  prophetess  of  ills  for  him  and  his 


.4- 
I  PHI  GEN  I A  AT  TAURIS.  319 

house!  Already  we  have  noted  that  she  be- 
came the  poet's  evil-boding  Cassandra  after 
his  return  vf rom  Italy,  that  is,  after  this  poem 
of  Iphigenia  had  been  written  and  printed. 
So  we  catch  a  strain  of  presentiment  in  re- 
gard to  the  poet's  coming  life;  a  vein  of 
prophecy  runs  through  the  present  drama 
which  to  us  is  its  subtlest  and  most  suggest- 
ive characteristic,  as  if  he  were  unconscious- 
ly forecasting  his  own  future  destiny. 

The  best  readers,  or  the  most  of  them, 
have  always  selected  the  Hymn  of  the  Fates 
(Parcas)  as  the  deepest-toned  passage  in  the 
drama,  and  as  that  portion  in  which  the  poet 
poured  forth  the  full  utterance  of  his 
wrought-up  Genius,  reaching  down  to  his  ul- 
timate creative  depths  when  he  beheld  in 
foreshow  his  own  future,  as  well  as  his  own 
Last  Judgment.  Listen  to  their  ominous 
chant:  "Let  the  mortal  who  has  been  exalt- 
ed by  the  Gods  fear  them  most,"  as  he  is 
already  dangling  on  the  precipices  and  clouds 
of  Fate.  "For  if  a  conflict  arises  between 
him  and  them,  down  he  is  hurled,  despised 
and  disgraced,  into  the  nighted  domain"  of 
Tartarus,  "where  he  will  await  forever  Jus- 
tice, being  chained  in  the  gloomy  underworld, 
whence  the  breath  of  smothered  Titans  as- 
cends like  the  incense  of  sacrifice  to  them 
sitting  at  their  eternal  banquets  on  the  gold- 


320    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

en  chairs "  of  Olympus.  So  Goethe  cast  a 
shadow  of  his  former  self  in  the  conflict  be- 
tween Titan  and  Olympian,  with  a  shudder- 
ing hint  of  the  penalty.  Verily  he  has  been  a 
kind  of  Tantalus  himself,  else  he  never  would 
have  written  this  poem,  for  only  his  personal 
experience  could  be  forged  through  his  goose 
quill  into  artistic  shapes.  Then  comes  the 
prophecy  of  the  divine  curse:  "The  Gods 
avert  their  eye  of  blessing  from  whole  gen- 
erations of  men,  and  shun  in  the  offspring 
the  once  loved  lineaments  of  the  ancestor. " 
So  the  Tantalids  have  felt  the  heavy  doom 
of  the  forefather,  "who  listens  now,  banned 
in  the  caverns  of  night ' '  to  this  song  * l  of  the 
Fates "  and  "the  old  man  thinks  of  child  and 
grandchild  and  shakes  his  head."  Here  the 
Goethe  of  not  yet  forty  forecasts  with  the 
seer's  prophetic  vision,  the  Goethe  of  eighty 
looking  upon  his  own  child  and  grandchil- 
dren and  even  naming  them  Tantalids,  the 
progeny  of  Tantalus.  For  from  what  other 
source  could  his  grandson,  Walter  Von  Goe- 
the derive  that  fate-laden  expression  of  his 
(in  a  letter  of  1848)  calling  himself  "a  relict 
of  the  House  of  Tantalus?"  He  as  a  boy 
doubtless  heard  it  drop  from  the  lips  of  the 
"old  man,"  his  grandfather,  in  some  mo- 
ment of  sighful  retrospect.  Such,  at  least, 
is  our  construction  of  the  situation. 


IPHIGENIA  AT  TAURIS.'*'  321 

In  this  same  fact  lies  the  reason  why  Goe- 
the shunned  the  representation  of  this  drama 
on  the  stage.  He  was  Director  of  the  Weimar 
theater,  and  yet  he  would  not  produce  it,  in 
spite  of  solicitation.  Finally  Schiller  per- 
suaded him,  but  had  to  take  charge  of  its 
theatrical  preparation  throughout.  In  the 
Correspondence  with  Schiller,  we  observe 
with  surprise  the  unwillingness  of  Goethe  to 
have  anything  to  do  with  his  own  great 
drama.  ' '  I  must  keep  aloof  from  Iphigenia, ' ' 
he  writes.  "I  do  not  wish  to  see  a  single 
rehearsal/'  he  says  with  sharp  emphasis. 
Why!  We  ask  with  wonder.  Certainly,  not 
because  he  was  ashamed  of  his  work  on  ac- 
count of  its  unpopularity,  that  would  not  be 
Goethe.  Some  biographers  say  he  had  lost 
interest  in  it;  rather  the  contrary,  in  our 
opinion — the  work  stirred  in  him  too  strong 
and  painful  an  interest.  So  his  drama  had 
to  wait  fifteen  years  in  his  own  theater  for 
its  first  presentation,  and  then  this  took  place 
through  the  persistency  and  labor  of  Schiller. 
He  could  not  bear  to  listen  to  the  story  of 
Tantalus  and  his  offspring  whose  imaged 
fate  was  realizing  itself  so  terribly  in  his  own 
life.  He  averted  his  face  from  the  picture  of 
his  own  deed  begetting  a  race  of  Tanta- 
lids. 

The     same     disinclination     to     see     his 


322  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

Iphigenia  acted  would  show  itself  during  liis 
later  life.  In  1825,  on  the  occasion  of  a 
great  festival  in  Ms  honor,  the  play 
was  given,  but  he  quit  the  theater  be- 
fore it  was  over.  In  1827  he  declined  to  wit- 
ness a  famous  actor  in  the  part  of  Orestes, 
excusing  himself  thus  to  his  friend  Zelter: 
"It  is  impossible  for  me  to  go.  What  good 
will  it  do  me  to  recall  the  days  when  I  felt, 
thought,  and  wrote  it  all."  But  the  reason 
why  just  this  drama  is  so  painful  to  him  he 
keeps  hidden  from  his  most  intimate  compan- 
ions. The  secret  of  Tantalus  seals  his  lips  for 
the  sake  of  the  living.  And  how  could  he,  look- 
ing back  at  his  fateful  deed  through  a  vista 
of  forty  years  endure  to  listen  to  that  dread- 
fully prophetic  Hymn  of  the  Fates  I 

Doubtless  he  chose  the  theme-  of  Iphigenia 
at  Tauris  in  preference  to  that  of  Iphigenia 
at  Aulis  as  more  profoundly  consonant  with 
his  poetical  instinct,  which  already  felt  him 
to  be  an  Orestes  haunted  by  the  Furies.  Also 
the  mediation  of  the  woman  lay  deep  in  his 
personal  experience.  Nor  did  the  poet  see 
the  real  ground  for  the  return  of  the  priest- 
ess to  Hellas,  which  needed  her  mediatorial 
service  as  well  as  Tauris;  witness  the  deeds 
of  her  royal  parents  as  typical  of  the  time 
and  people.  Hence  no  Iphigenia  at  Delphi 
could  complete  itself  from  Goethe's  pen.  Nor 


.*• 
I  PHI  GEN  I A  AT  TAURIS.  323 

did  it  ever  seem  to  rise  into  his  consciousness 
that  in  golden  Mycenae,  where  she  was  born 
and  whence  she  came  to  Aulis  for  her  sacri- 
fice, there  was  a  theme  for  a  poem  to  show 
her  preparatory  training  for  her  work.  Her 
life  at  Tauris  pre-supposes  a  long  prelude, 
which  did  not  involve  him  personally. 

Thus  the  mentally  vigilant  reader,  looking 
backwards  and  forwards  from  Goethe's  one 
Iphigenia,  may  catch  the  outlines  of  three 
others  going  before  or  following  after  this 
central  figure,  who  is  but  a  single  phase  of 
the  total  mythus.  But  also  we  should  behold 
the  poem  inwardly,  and  mark  its  prophetic 
character  as  its  truly  immortal  soul.  For  in 
it  the  poet  becomes  the  seer  of  himself,  fore- 
shadowing his  own  future  in  the  most  inti- 
mate strand  of  his  existence. 

But  there  are  other  very  important  and 
edifying  points  of  view  for  fully  appropriat- 
ing Goethe's  Iphigenia.  We  delight  in  con- 
templating her  as  the  prototype  of  the  media- 
torial woman,  who  has  suffered  much,  yet  has 
transfigured  her  suffering  into  a  blessing  for 
herself  and  still  more  for  others. 

She  has  endured  not  death,  but  what  she 
probably  deems  worse — a  long  exile  from 
her  native  Hellas  to  a  barbarous  land  in 
which  she  has  performed  the  function  of  the 
humane  priestess  and  civilizer  during  many 


324          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

years.  Thus  she  casts  an  image  of  all  Greek 
culture  in  its  influence  upon  the  ruder  non- 
Greek  nations  of  the  world.  In  her  story  we 
catch  a  glimpse  of  Hellas  imparting  her 
civilization  to  backward  peoples.  Goethe 
called  himself  often  the  Northern  barbarian, 
who  went  to  the  South  for  the  Hellenic  spirit. 
Even  in  the  ancient  drama  of  Euripides  such 
a  missionary  idea  glimmers  through  to  the 
watchful  eye.  But  in  the  reproduction  of  the 
German  poet  this  character  of  Iphigenia 
comes  out  far  more  emphatically.  For  the 
author  himself  is  now  the  recipient  of  Iphi- 
genia 's  gift  and  may  well  deem  himself  the 
beneficiary  of  her  sacrifice.  The  old  Greek 
poet,  Euripides,  could  not  feel  such  gratitude 
to  his  heroine. 

Still  he  utters  very  suggestively  the  value 
of  such  sacrifice  to  the  sufferer  herself.  It 
becomes  her  true  salvation.  In  the  most 
striking  passage  of  the  ancient  drama 
(Iphigenia  at  Aulis,  line  1440)  she  cries  out 
in  exalted  prophecy  to  her  mother  who 
deemed  her  lost:  "But  I  am  not  lost,  I  am 
saved. "  Hardly  has  the  world  yet  reached 
this  lofty  pinnacle  of  conduct.  Goethe  vivifies 
such  an  Iphigenia  more  completely  than 
Euripides,  but  beyond  Goethe  there  is  still 
room  for  a  higher  fulfillment. 

The  eternal  charm  of  the  Iphegenia  legend 


.*• 

IPHIGENIA  AT  TAURIS.  325 

in  its  ancient  and  modern  forms  is  its  similar- 
ity to  the  story  of  Christ.  To  lose  life  is  to 
find  it  is  instruction  given  by  both.  Then  the 
missionary  spirit,  in  spite  of  their  different 
ways,  is  common  to  both.  In  each  case  the 
innocent  soul  gives  itself  for  the  guilty.  Greek 
Iphigenia,  as  a  free-will  offering,  is  borne  to 
savage  Tauris,  where  she  becomes  the  em- 
bodiment as  well  as  the  doctrine  of  her  own 
sacrifice.  Thus  the  old  sages  and  seers  of 
Greece  were  conscious  of  their  universal  mis- 
sion. 

On  the  subject  of  Iphigenia  the  ancient 
Greeks  have  left  numerous  scattered  hints, 
but  it  was  Euripides  who  concentrated  the 
somewhat  drifting  legend  in  two  plays  which 
have  become  immortal  (Iph.  at  Aulis  and  Iph. 
at  Tauris).  Mankind  has  refused  to  let  such 
a  striking  conception  of  its  own  supreme 
ideal  pass  into  oblivion;  the  result  is  a  long 
line  of  Iphigenia  dramas  and  poems  down  to 
the  present  day.  It  may  be  said  that  this 
Mythus  has  shown  its  inner  power  by  evolv- 
ing with  civilization  down  the  ages,  and  re- 
flecting the  same  in  many  works  of  art  (for 
a  much  more  complete  account  of  the  Iphi- 
genia story,  and  its  place  in  the  world's 
literature,  see  our  Agamemnon's  Daughter, 
p.  196,  etc.) 

We  may  next  consider  more  specially  Goe- 


326          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

the 's  treatment  in  its  general  significance  and 
in  its  very  distinct  personal  relation  to  him- 
self. For  in  her  he  saw,  we  repeat,  the 
mediatorial  woman  projecting  a  phase  of  his 
own  deepest  experience  into  an  ancient  tale. 
This  character  of  hers  we  shall  emphasize  in 
particular  points. 

I.  She,  through  her  own  spiritual  gift,  has 
shown  the  power  to  mediate  herself  from  her 
fatal    inheritance    and    environment.      She 
knows  and  says  that  she  belongs  to  the  guilty 
House  of  Tantalus,  whose  bloody  vengeful 
horrors  form  the  most  gruesome  chapter  of 
Greek  mythology.     Eevenge  upon  revenge, 
and  retribution  upon  retribution  pile  up  the 
mountain   of  its  tragedies.     But  Iphigenia 
through  herself,  through  her  sacrifice  and  de- 
votion to  humanity,  has  turned  off  the  curse 
of  her  kin  and  become  her  own  mediator  with 
herself  and  with  the  Divine  Order  through 
her  long  trial  of  priestly  service. 

II.  She  has  mediated  the  barbarous  world 
from  remorseless  savagery  to  a  higher  life 
and  civilization  through  her  example  and  doc- 
trine.    She   has   even   transformed   the   old 
cruel  religion  of  the  Taurians,  who  sacrificed 
to  their  pitiless  deity  the  man  cast  by  ship- 
wreck or  other  chance  upon  their  shore.  Thus 
she  is  the  missionary  of  humanity  to  all  in- 
humanity.   As  she  has  mediated  herself  out 


I  PHI  GEN  I A  AT  TAURIS.  327 

of  her  ferocious  blood,  so  she  mediates  the 
inborn  ferocity  of  an  uncivilized  people. 

III.  And  now  comes  her  supreme  act  of 
mediation  in  Goethe's  drama.     She  has  to 
mediate  her  own  brother  Orestes  pursued  by 
the  Furies  of  his  special  deed  of  guilt  which 
is  also  that  of  the  House  of  Tantalus  gener- 
ally.   As  she  has  redeemed  herself  from  the' 
deep-seated  taint  of  her  family,  so  she  is  now 
to  redeem  her  next  of  kin  who  is  still  under 
the  doom  of  his  own  curse  and  that  of  his 
House.     Such  is  the  heaven-wide  contrast: 
both  brother  and  sister  are  Tantalids,  of  one 
blood  and  under  one  judgment,  but  stand  at 
the  extreme  opposite  points  of  the  spiritual 
universe — the    reconciled    and    the    damned. 
But  reconciliation  cannot  be  truly  itself  till 
it  reconcile  its  other,  now  its  very  brother. 
So  Iphigenia  mediates  Orestes  and  brings 
to  an  end  the  curse  of  her  house. 

IV.  So  far  Goethe  carries  us  in  his  intern- 
al   way;    also    Euripides  reaches  the  same 
point,  though  in  a  much  more  external  man- 
ner. -  Thus  both  the  ancient  poet  and  the  mod- 
ern one  indicate  the  healing  of  Orestes,  and 
therewith  the  return  of  Iphigenia  to  Hellas. 
But  when  she  gets  back  home,  has  she  noth- 
ing to  do  1    We  hold  that  here  a  new  work  be- 
gins for  her :  nothing  less  than  the  regenera- 
tion of  all  Hellas  which  is  more  or  less  in  the 


328          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

condition  of  the  Tantalids  given  up  to  re- 
venge and  hence  hounded  by  the  Furies. 
Later  Hellenic  history,  especially  during  the 
Peloponnesian  War,  show  both  the  character 
and  the  deeds  of  the  whole  people,  which  call 
up  the  scourging  Eumenides,  like  those  of 
Orestes.  In  fact  every  Greek  was  an  Orestes 
-of  some  sort. 

It  should  be  added  that  the  truth  of  this 
way  of  mediating  man's  guilt  has  been  not 
merely  questioned  but  stoutly  denied.  Iphi- 
genia  cannot  set  free  her  brother  as  the  mur- 
derer of  his  mother,  she  cannot  ban  the 
Furies  of  such  a  heinous  deed.  The  church 
naturally  says  that  true  absolution  can  come 
only  through  priestly  mediation  invoking  the 
intercession  of  the  Mediator  himself,  the  Son 
of  God,  the  source  of  all  true  forgiveness.  On 
the  other  hand  we  may  hear  the  disbeliever 
declaring  that  Orestes  had  done  the  deed  in- 
expiable on  earth  and  in  Heaven,  that  he  can- 
not repent  and  live,  his  sole  absolution  can 
take  place  only  through  his  own  free-willed 
death  (See  Engel's  Goethe,  p.  292).  Suicide 
is  the  one  atonement  of  matricide.  The  act 
of  Orestes  is  tragic  and  cannot  be  mediated, 
he  must  perish;  Yet  old  Aeschylus  gave  him 
expiation  at  last  through  the  Court  of  the 
Areiopagus,  a  politico-religious  tribunal. 

Goethe    wrote    long    afterward    (1827)    a 


IPHIGENIA  AT  TAURIS.  329 

verse  which  pertains  just  to  this  act  of  Iphi- 
genia: "Pure  humanity  can  atone  (or 
mediate)  all  human  shortcomings  (Gebre- 
chen)."  It  is  contended,  however,  that  such  a 
work  of  expiation  and  forgiveness  is  as  mir- 
aculous as  the  external  command  of  the  God- 
dess in  Euripides,  or  as  the  Christian  pro- 
cess of  repentance  and  restoration.  So  we 
record  the  denial  of  the  mediatorial  act  of  the 
drama:  Iphigenia  as  merely  human,  as  sim- 
ply an  individual,  cannot  absolve  the  guilty 
one — that  can  be  accomplished  only  through 
the  saving  institution  or  through  death.  Thus 
we  may  hear  from  two  opposite  sides  the 
negation  of  Iphigenia 's  priestly  or  reconcil- 
ing function,  which  she  is  supposed  to  have 
derived  from  the  long  service  of  the  Goddess. 
Still  a  great  majority  of  the  deeper  read- 
ers have  come  to  accept  Iphigenia  for  what 
she  stands  in  Goethe's  poem,  which  at  its 
best  inculcates  the  mediatorial  power  exist- 
ent in  every  human  being.  Every  man  can 
become  a  Christ,  and  that  is  the  true  imita- 
tion of  the  Savior,  namely  to  save.  Of  course 
Goethe's  work  was  not  understood  at  its  first 
appearance,  it  had  to  train  its  readers  and  is 
still  training  them.  At  present  it  is  much 
studied  in  the  schools  at  home  and  abroad ;  it 
is  truly  a  pivotal  utterance  of  his  life-poem. 


330    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 


TASSO. 

Again  must  be  emphasized  that  statement 
so  often  made  before:  all  of  Goethe's  impor- 
tant works  are  confessions,  wherein  he  sets 
forth  his  spirit's  sufferings  and  his  recovery 
through  artistic  utterance.  So  he  himself 
has  declared  in  his  Autobiography,  written 
some  twenty  years  or  more  after  his  Tasso, 
which  also  expresses  the  same  fact  in  a  highly 
poetic  way.  "A  God  has  given  me  the  power 
to  tell  what  I  suffer  " ;  such  we  may  deem  the 
pivotal  sentence  of  Tasso,  which  throws  its 
light  backward  and  forward  over  Goethe's 
whole  life.  Other  men  "turn  dumb"  in  their 
sorrows,  but  the  Muse  has  endowed  him  with 
the  gift  of  transfiguring  his  tribulations  of 
life  into  poetry,  and  thereby  of  finding  his 
heart 's  alleviation.  Tasso  we  may,  therefore, 
expect  to  be  a  record  of  his  outer  and  inner 
experiences  at  a  throeful  turn  of  his  career. 
So  it  was  regarded  by  all  his  acquaintances 
at  Weimar  when  it  first  appeared.  Herder, 
perhaps  his  most  intimate  interpreter,  had 
hardly  read  the  first  scene,  according  to  the 
report  of  his  wife,  when  he  burst  out: 
"Goethe  has  to  idealize  himself  and  write 
everything  from  what  he  has  experienced." 
Speaking  to  Eckermann  against  foisting  an 


TASSO.  331 

idea  upon  the  work,  the  poet  unfolded  his 
own  idea  of  it :  ' i  I  had  Tasso  's  life  and  mine 
own,  I  put  the  two  peculiar  characters  to- 
gether, and  so  arose  the  image  of  Tasso,  in 
prosaic  contrast  to  Antonio,  for  whom  also 
I  had  models.  The  other  relations  of  life, 
love,  and  the  court,  were  quite  in  Weimar  as 
in  Ferrara.  Thus  I  can  rightly  say  of  my 
poetic  presentation:  it  is  bone  of  my  bone 
and  flesh  of  my  flesh. "  Here  the  poet  cer- 
tainly interprets  himself :  Ferrara  is  an  ideal- 
ized photograph  of  Weimar,  especially  as 
Goethe  had  experienced  it  during  his  first 
Decennium  in  that  little  capital.  But  we 
should  add  that  it  has  something  that  means 
a  good  deal  more,  namely,  the  element  of 
universality  which  belongs  to  all  times  and 
places.  Tasso 's  conflict  in  both  its  phases  is 
man's,  particularly  the  ideal-seeking  man's, 
he  being  not  confined  to  any  city  or  nation. 

Hitherto  the  poet  has  revealed  himself  in 
the  multitudinous  shapes  of  his  characters, 
who,  however,  veil  his  talk  in  a  kind  of  dis- 
guise. But  now  the  leading  character  is  the 
poet  himself  speaking  in  his  own  name  and 
right,  and  portraying  his  own  conflicts.  That 
is,  the  poet  poetizes  himself.  Goethe  previ- 
ously has  been  the  secret  demiurge  making 
his  little  worlds  and  filling  them  with  his  peo- 
ple. Hence  we  have  there  to  detect  him  in 


332     GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

his  work  and  to  drag  him  forth  to  the  light. 
But  in  his  Tasso  he  introduces  the  world- 
maker  himself  in  his  environment,  and  un- 
masks him  to  the  very  soul.  Thus  Goethe 
tells  on  himself  at  his  confessional,  which  is 
his  creative  literature.  The  collisions  as  well 
as  the  dangers  of  the  poetic  temperament, 
yea  its  temptations  and  transgressions  are 
narrated  unsparingly.  Goethe  once  desig- 
nated his  Tasso  as  showing  "the  dispropor- 
tion of  talent  with  life,"  talent  here  signify- 
ing probably  poetic  genius,  which  feels  itself 
hampered  on  all  sides  by  the  existent  order. 
Such  was  his  own  condition,  especially  during 
the  Frankfort  Quadrennium,  when  he  would 
burst  over  all  limits  "to  the  Infinite"  in  his 
Titanic  mood.  So  Tasso  has  his  bitter  strug- 
gles, outer  and  inner,  reflecting  undoubtedly 
Goethe 's  own.  But  the  poem  does  not  stop 
at  this  point.  It  mediates  the  poet  in  his  two 
main  conflicts,  the  one  with  the  prose  of  life 
and  the  other  with  the  anguish  of  an  impos- 
sible love.  Else  he  were  verily  tragic,  which 
is  the  view  taken  by  numerous  readers  and 
critics.  But  at  the  end  of  the  play  he  declares 
himself  saved  from  shipwreck,  and  he  is  rec- 
onciled with  Antonio,  the  man  of  affairs  hith- 
erto his  foe.  "So  the  sailor  is  rescued  by  the 
rock  on  which  his  ship  went  to  pieces."  But 
more  deeply  remedial  is  his  poetic  art,  which 


.*• 
TASSO.  333 

enables  him  to  transfigure  his  suffering  and 
obtain  relief  and  redemption.  Tasso  is  thus 
at  last  self-mediated,  wherein  this  poem 
shows  a  difference  from  Iphigenid,  in  which 
the  woman  is  the  mediatrix  of  the  Fury- 
pursued  Orestes.  But  in  the  present  drama 
the  woman  does  not  succeed  in  reconciling  the 
poet  with  himself  and  with  the  world,  though 
two  women  try  it,  each  in  her  own  way,  and 
fail.  To  be  sure,  Tasso  ascribes  his  power 
of  telling  and  thus  mediating  his  woes  to  a 
God,  whom,  however,  he  communes  with  and 
voices.  Thus  he  must  essentially  perform  the 
act  himself.  Such  we  may  deem  the  chief 
advance  of  Tasso  upon  the  previous  drama 
of  Iphigenia. 

If  we  make  the  personal  application  which 
always  underlies  Goethe's  poetic  characters, 
we  see  that  no  longer  Frau  Von  Stein  can 
mediate  him  in  his  new  stage  as  she  once 
did  in  the  Weimar  Epoch.  He  had  already 
forefelt  some  such  limit  in  her  power  when 
he  secretly  took  flight  from  her  presence  to 
Italy.  Still  in  Ipliigenia  her  previous  medi- 
atorial influence  is  celebrated,  and  fully  rec- 
ognized and  brought  to  a  close.  But  the  poet 
must  at  last  mediate  himself  through  his  own 
supernal  gift  of  genius.  So  he  transcends  his 
former  mediatrix,  who  is  unable  to  heal  his 
malady,  like  Tasso 's,  of  emotion  and  imagi- 


334    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

nation.  In  his  soul  lie  must  become  self- 
remedial,  limit-transcending  through  his  own 
divine  endowment;  his  poetic  nature  must 
cure  its  own  wounds,  like  the  spear  of 
Achilles.  In  the  poem  this  process  is  briefly 
suggested  rather  than  explicitly  wrought  out 
to  its  fulness;  hence  many  do  not  see  it  or 
disregard  its  significance,  deeming  the  work 
to  be  really  a  tragedy. 

There  is  another  faci  in  this  connection 
which  connot  be  omitted.  The  composition 
of  Tasso  was  completed  in  July,  1789,  his  first 
meeting  with  Christiane  in  the  Weimar  Park 
was  in  July  1788.  Thus  for  the  whole  year 
during  which  he  was  bringing  his  drama  to 
its  last  finish,  he  had  begun  to  feel  the  ban 
which  Weimar  society  visited  upon  him  on 
account  of  his  open  violation  of  the  Family. 
This  was  his  deed  which  isolated  him  more 
than  anything  else,  more  than  his  Olympian 
manner  and  his  changed  style  of  writing. 
Hence  the  reader  often  feels  a  peculiar  mood 
of  loneliness  in  Tasso,  who  receives  so  many 
rebuffs  from  the  world,  being  driven  back 
upon  himself  by  Antonio  and  also  by  the  Prin- 
cess, and  being  put  in  confinement  by  the 
Duke.  Though  the  Roman  Elegies  express 
the  sensuous  delights  of  the  poet's  life  with 
Christiane,  there  must  have  been  another  side 
to  the  picture  when  the  transgressor  stepped 


TASSO.  335 

forth  into  the  community  whose  deepest  law 
he  had  defied.  We  may  hear  in  the  suffering 
Tasso  many  an  echo  of  the  solitary  Goethe 
isolated  by  his  act  in  his  own  social  environ- 
ment. Such  is  the  new  fate  which  Goethe  the 
lover  has  brought  upon  himself,  and  which 
will  weave  a  tragic  tale  through  his  whole 
life-poem.  We  may  catch  its  first  shadow  in 
the  sorrows  of  Tasso,  though  the  circum- 
stances be  very  different  in  the  case  of  the 
two  poets. 

Indeed,  Goethe  afterwards  was  inclined  to 
criticise  himself  as  having  put  too  much  of 
his  own  into  his  work :  "  I  had  transfused  into 
my  Tasso  more  of  mine  own  heart's  blood 
than  was  fitting."  Hence  it  comes  that  he 
avoided  seeing  it  represented  on  the  stage, 
as  it  would  call  up  his  past  sufferings.  In  his 
old  age  (1827)  he  declared  that  he  had  never 
read  Tasso  through  in  its  printed  form,  and 
that  in  the  theatre  he  had  heard  only  frag- 
ments of  it.  Still  it  was  often  given  on  the 
Weimar  stage.  Even  more  intense  was  his 
avoidance  of  his  own  Iphigenia,  and  for  a 
deeper  reason,  already  given. 

I.  This  drama  we  place  as  the  third  of  the 
Italian  Trilogy,  as  it  was  written  or  rather 
re-written,  in  the  Italian  mood,  and  was 
churned  over  a  good  deal  in  Italy.  It  sends 
its  roots  back  to  the  Frankfort  Epoch,  even 


336          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

to  the  poet's  boyhood  in  the  paternal  home 
where  he  read  Tasso  in  a  German  translation, 
and  also  in  the  original  it  seems.  But  dur- 
ing the  Weimar  Epoch  the  life  of  Tasso  came 
home  to  him  with  a  new  meaning,  for  he  felt 
the  marvelous  identity  of  the  Italian  poet's 
situation  with  his  own.  He  must  then  have 
deeply  realized  that  Tasso,  the  poet  at  Fer- 
rara,  was  Goethe  the  poet  at  Weimar.  So  he 
starts,  in  accord  with  his  literary  bent,  to 
uttering  his  most  vital  experience  in  a  poem. 
Already  in  1780  we  see  by  a  brief  jotting  in 
his  diary  that  the  subject  was  fermenting 
strongly  in  him,  and  was  beginning  to  take 
form;  in  November,  1781,  two  acts  were 
done,  but  it  refused  to  complete  itself  for  a 
good  reason :  he  was  still  in  the  toils  of  Frau 
Von  Stein,  and  that  situation  was  all  that 
this  first  dramatic  attempt  could  portray. 
But  the  finished  drama,  as  we  have  it,  turns 
finally  on  the  breach  with  her  love,  though 
setting  forth  in  great  amplitude  the  signifi- 
cance of  this  love  for  the  poet  and  his  career. 
In  its  early  form,  the  drama  was,  as  he 
says,  written  in  prose  like  Iphigenia,  though 
no  copy  of  this  original  fragment  has  yet 
been  found.  But  obeying  that  curious  fore- 
cast of  his  coming  poetic  renascence,  he  took 
his  unfinished  and  as  yet  unfinishable  Tasso 
in  manuscript  to  Italy,  along  with  his  other 


TA880.  337 

torsos ;  and  there  he  lived  out  and  hence  could 
write  out  its  fulfilment.  When  his  Italian 
Journey  was  nearing  its  end,  he  says  in  a 
letter  to  the  Duke:  "As  the  fascination 
which  first  drew  me  to  this  subject  sprang 
from  my  innermost  nature,  so  my  effort,  now 
undertaken  to  bring  it  to  a  close,  tacks  onto 
the  end  of  my  Italian  career. "  He  connects 
his  separation  from  Rome  with  that  of  Tasso 
from  his  loved  princess  at  Ferrara,  and  he 
begins  to  knead  over  the  passages  of  the 
drama  which  involve  the  situation  and  its 
emotion  with  "a  peculiar  delight."  Hence 
he  motives  "the  painful  strand  which  runs 
through  the  whole  piece. "  While  winding 
around  in  Italy  on  the  way  homeward,  he 
composes,  various  portions  of  the  poem,  as 
the  mood  stirs  him.  He  seems  to  have  writ- 
ten it  backwards  in  part;  at  least,  it  is  re- 
corded that  the  last  scenes  were  composed  at 
Florence  in  the  Boboli  Gardens;  then  the 
fourth  Act,  and  even  the  third  at  Weimar  on 
his  return,  the  whole  being  finished  in  1789 
and  published  the  next  year. 

Thus  we  observe  that  it  stands  third  in 
the  order  of  its  evolution  and  of  its  comple- 
tion among  the  dramas  of  the  Italian  Trilogy. 
It  has  a  note  of  pensive  reminiscence  all  the 
way  through  as  of  a  happy  time  past  and 
transcended.  It  is  Goethe  in  his  present  state 


338    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

looking  back  and  brooding  over  his  long  re- 
lation to  Frau  Von  Stein.  Her  love  was  for 
him  a  deeply  disciplining  and  reconciling 
principle  for  many  years,  which,  however, 
has  shown  its  limitations,  and  these  he  must 
now  surmount  or  perish  as  a  soul  unfulfilled 
of  its  true  mission.  Such  is  his  confession 
in  this  drama:  the  most  poignant  suffering 
was  his,  but  it  had  to  be  met,  being  the  pang 
of  a  new  birth  for  him.  Nay,  it  had  to  be 
poetically  recorded  in  all  its  fullness  if  he 
were  ever  to  get  relief  from  his  pain  and 
find  atonement. 

In  fact,  it  is  just  this  redemption  through 
poetic  utterance  which  Tasso  unfolds  and 
reveals  in  his  long  and  fearful  trial,  and  thus 
mirrors  Goethe  at  his  deepest.  The  pivotal, 
quite  untranslatable  lines  of  the  poem  have 
often  been  recognized :  ' '  Though  man  turns 
dumb  in  his  anguish,  a  God  has  given  me  the 
power  to  say  what  I  suffer. "  This  might  be 
taken  as  the  literary  thought  of  Goethe 9a 
whole  life :  mine  is  the  God-given  voice  which 
taps  in  me  the  last  sources  of  sorrow  and 
lets  them  rise  into  words  for  my  relief  and 
reconciliation.  So  his  writings  are  his  soul- 
stricken  confessions,  and  for  him  literature 
is  mediatorial,  verily  its  truest  and  deepest 
function.  In  his  late  autumnal  days  he  cites 
the  above-mentioned  lines  as  the  motto  to 


TASSO.  339 

his  verses  in  which  a  God  gave  him  again 
to  say  what  he  suffered  in  his  love  for  Ulrike, 
whereby  he  was  restored  and  lived. 

The  play  of  Goethe's  Tasso  is  not,  there- 
fore, a  tragedy,  as  it  is  often  called  and  re- 
garded, but  its  total  sweep  means  the  media- 
tion of  the  otherwise  tragic  man  through  his 
poetry.  Over  and  over  again  Goethe  has  in- 
timated that  his  gift  of  poetic  utterance  has 
saved  his  life  or  at  least  has  lifted  him  out 
of  the  slough  of  mortal  agony  and  despair, 
so  violently  have  his  emotions  torn  him  to 
pieces  within.  Tasso,  after  terrific  convul- 
sions of  feeling,  which  rage  through  love  and 
folly,  reaching  even  a  psychic  insanity,  is 
cured  by  the  divine  gift  of  the  Muse,  which 
enables  him  to  throw  into  speech  the  malady 
of  his  Genius.  On  the  other  hand,  this  play  is 
not  a  comedy  in  the  ordinary  sense;  it  is  in- 
deed a  most  serious,  sombre  piece,  which, 
however,  is  redemptive  of  its  hero.  Thus  it 
belongs  to  a  class  which  we  find  also  in 
Shakespeare,  namely,  a  tragic  soul  destined 
to  perish,  mediated  through  sorrow  for  its 
transgression,  followed  by  confession  and  re- 
pentance. But  Shakespeare  has  nowhere 
portrayed  the  poet  as  mediating  his  own 
tragedy  just  through  his  God-sent  word  of 
deliverance.  Yet  the  reader  often  feels  that 
Shakespeare  in  writing  Hamlet  freed  his  own 


340          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.  -PART  SECOND. 

soul  of  Hamlet's  tragedy,,  and  especially  in 
elaborating  so  fully  Antony  and.  Cleopatra 
he  won  relief  from  "the  perilous  stuff  "  of  his 
own  bosom.  But  in  Tasso  we  behold  the  poet 
poetizing  his  own  doom  as  it  were,  and  there- 
by escaping  from  it,  depicting  his  own  dis- 
eased imagination  in  all  its  frantic  contor- 
tions, and  with  such  medicine  curing  himself 
of  his  poetic  malady. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  Goethe  had  a  tendency 
to  connect  his  Tasso  with  his  Werther,  of 
which  it  is  an  "  intensified "  copy,  says 
Goethe  to  Eckermann  in  a  conversation  cit- 
ing the  view  of  the  French  critic  Ampere, 
who  has  also  noted  that  "in  the  first  ten 
years  of  my  Weimar  service  I  accomplished 
as  good  as  nothing,"  and  that  "despair  drove 
me  to  Italy, ' '  where  with  new  creative  power 
"I  seized  upon  the  story  of  Tasso  in  order 
to  free  myself  of  the  painful  memories  of 
Weimar. ' '  Also,  Goethe  notes  and  praises  this 
very  significant  thought  in  his  French  appre- 
ciator  who  "points  out  the  relation  between 
the  created  product  and  its  creator '  ' ;  but  es- 
pecially "he  judges  the  different  works  of  the 
poet  as  the  different  fruits  of  different 
Epochs  in  the  life  of  their  author."  Sugges- 
tive are  these  remarks  as  indicating  how 
Goethe,  now  an  old  man,  looks  back  at  his  own 
biography  and  intimates  the  way  in  which 


TASSO.  341  ' 

it  should  be  written,  namely,  with  emphasis 
upon  its  Epochs. 

II.  The  first  thing,  though  not  the  deep- 
est, to  be  grasped  in  this  dramatic  concep- 
tion is  the  opposition  between  the  two  char- 
acters of  Tasso  and  Antonio.  This  opposi- 
tion is  what  Goethe  seeks  to  reconcile  from 
beginning  to  end.  Tasso  is,  of  course,  the 
poet  in  the  midst  of  the  business  world  and  of 
state  affairs,  which  have  their  right  and  must 
be  looked  after  by  the  man  especially  trained 
to  their  administration,  who  is  thus  Antonio, 
a  worldling  doubtless,  but  indispensable. 
Tasso,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  dreamer  liv- 
ing in  his  own  ideal  realm,  the  fabrication  of 
his  brain;  he  is  extremely  sensitive  and  sub- 
jective, and  easily  becomes  the  victim  of  his 
own  fancies ;  he  has  been  praised  and  coddled 
at  the  Court,  especially  by  its  two  leading 
women,  till  he  can  endure  no  limitation,  not 
even  his  own ;  the  exclusive  poetical  habit  has 
so  etherealized  him,  that  he  has  lost  his  rela- 
tion to  the  solid  world  of  reality  and  takes 
the  fictions  of  his  imagination  as  the  facts  of 
life.  Thus  he  shows  the  mental  malady  which 
may  come  of  a  one-sided  devotion  to  poetry, 
without  the  corrective  of  practical  affairs. 
Still  he  is  the  genius  to  whom  the  Muse  whis- 
pers her  choicest  message ;  therein  he  stands 
unique  in  a  divine  endowment.  Hence  he  is 


342          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

the  favorite  of  the  Court,  its  supreme  orna-. 
ment,  the  like  of  whom  no  other  Court  of 
Italy  at  that  time  can  show,  the  Kohinoor 
diamond,  the  only  one  in  the  world.  The 
Duke  apreciates  the  treasure  and  seeks  in 
every  way  to  keep  it,  and  even  to  secure  it 
more  firmly.  So  he  has  to  put  up  with  much 
in  magnanimous  patience  from  the  wild  ca- 
reenings  of  his  Pegasus-mounted  singer. 

Quite  the  opposite,  both  in  temper  and  ed- 
ucation, is  the  prosaic  hard-headed  Secretary 
of  State,  Antonio  Montecatino,  who  indeed 
in  vacant  hours  can  trifle  a  little  with  poetry, 
as  a  rather  idle  amusement.  Hence  he  likes 
Ariosto  as  a  pretty  fabler  and  spinner  of  fan- 
ciful romances,  whom  he  praises  in  secret 
contrast  to  Tasso,  who,  of  course,  gets  irri- 
tated. But  Antonio  is  the  practical  man, 
whose  life  has  been  to  deal  with  practical 
men,  whose  soul  is  indurated  in  utility  and 
can  grasp  only  finite  ends,  wherein  lies  his 
ultimate  conviction.  An  indispensable  man, 
with  his  part  in  the  world's  order  certainly; 
but  he  gets  to  thinking  that  he  is  the  totality 
of  it,  and  so  scoffs  at  the  other  half  of  the 
universe,  and  its  representative  in  the  poet 
Tasso,  who  repays  contempt  with  contempt 
and  something  more,  for  we  shall  behold  the 
ideal  drawing  its  literal  blade  upon  the  real. 

Thus  we  have  the  conflict  which  envelops 


TASSO.  343 

the  whole  poem  embodied  in  two  personages. 
What  shall  we  call  it!  In  its  immediate  form 
it  is  Prose  against  Poetry,  Imagination  fight- 
ing the  Fact,  the  Supersensible  clashing  with 
the  Sensible,  the  subjective  underworld  boiling 
up  against  the  objective  over  world — and  still 
further  we  might  categorize  the  battling  dual- 
ism. But  let  the  culmination  be  told  at  once : 
after  a  furiously  fought  word-contest,  Tasso 
uncontrolled  pulls  his  sword  upon  Antonio  the 
self-controlled,  to  settle  the  world-old  diffi- 
culty just  there — when  suddenly  the  Duke  ap- 
pears, stops  the  combat  and  sends  the  poet, 
caught  in  the  act,  to  his  room  under  arrest. 
Thus  a  power  over  both  brings  a  truce,  after 
which  begins  the  attempt  of  the  drama  to  heal 
the  heart-deep  scission  of  the  two  antagon- 
ists, or  we  may  say  to  mediate  the  collision 
between  the  two  men  of  two  different  worlds. 
Here  again  we  may  see  an  intimate  con- 
fession of  Goethe  himself  thrown  out  into 
his  art.  The  poet,  passing  from  his  creative 
epoch  at  Frankfort  into  his  official  life  at 
Weimar,  is  plunged  suddenly  from  the 
heights  of  imagination  into  rude  actuality; 
his  Muse  hitherto  ranging  in  freedom,  has  to 
get  into  harness  and  has  to  work  at  earth's 
tyrannous  tasks;  for  ten  years  and  more  his 
servitude  (like  that  of  the  God  Apollo  to  the 
mortal  monarch  Admetus)  lasted  till  finally 


344    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

the  deity  in  him  broke  his  chains  and  fled  to 
Italy  for  a  new  liberty  and  redemption.  All 
officialdom  had  risen  in  hostility  to  the  ad- 
vent of  the  poet  at  Weimar ;  not  one  but  many 
Antonios  showed  animosity  and  jealousy,  but 
he  put  them  down  in  the  end,  though  at  the 
cost  of  his  genius,  which,  however,  was  through 
such  a  training  to  burst  forth  in  new  splen- 
dor. Now  this  very  poem  has  in  it  Goethe  look- 
ing backward  to  his  testful  discipline  of  life's 
prosaic  drudgery,  and  is  a  record  of  his  inner 
upheavals.  To  us  Tasso  is  Goethe's  internal- 
ity  turned  outward  in  poetic  confession;  the 
love,  the  agony,  yea  the  nagging  suspicion 
and  jealousy  of  Tasso  unroll  a  vivid  pano- 
rama of  Goethe's  underworld  in  his  strife 
at  Weimar  with  not  only  one  but  many  An- 
tonios, who  abounded  there  in  officialdom. 

But  we  have  to  add  that  Goethe  not  only 
conquered  Antonio,  but  appropriated  him; 
in  fact,  he  became  Antonio  also  in  himself, 
the  man  of  affairs,  making  his  own  completely 
the  business  consciousness,  and  sucking  out 
of  it  whatever  worth  it  had.  He  must  be  the 
whole  man  Goethe,  not  the  half-man  Tasso, 
though  so  beautifully  poetic,  nor  the  half- 
man  Antonio,  so  skillful  in  all  practical  mat- 
ters. Thus  in  himself  he  has  harmonized 
their  collision,  but  only  after  the  toughest 
kind  of  a  battle,  of  which  this  poem  is  the 


TASSO.  345 

idealized  account.  Now  the  process  of  the  poet 
Goethe,  here  the  whole  man,  is  that  he  splits 
himself  into  the  two  parts  of  himself  in  his 
former  conflict,  and  projects  them  into  char- 
acters who  are  also  existent  individuals  whom 
he  actually  knew  at  Weimar,  and  whom  he 
reads  of  as  living  at  Ferrara  hundreds  of 
years  ago.  Only  the  total  Goethe  in  Italy 
could  have  projected  these  characters  and 
their  conflict  as  stages  of  his  former  Self. 
And  we  can  trace  the  same  evolution  in  the 
total  Shakespeare  who  through  the  experi- 
ence of  life  came  to  hold  in  his  personality 
his  entire  dramatic  population. 

Leonore,  the  Countess,  the  keenest-witted 
personage  of  the  drama,  has  hit  off  this  pecu- 
liar mental  division  of  one  entire  soul  into 
two  different  men  (III.  2).  She  declares 
that  Nature  cast  the  twain,  Tasso  and  An- 
tonio, into  opposites  because  "she  could  not 
weld  them  into  a  single  man,"  such  as  is 
Goethe,  who  probably  took  this  view  of  him- 
self, and  applied  it  also  to  the  two  women  of 
the  drama,  who,  different  as  they  are  in  char- 
acter, are  unified  in  one  trait,  that  of  loving 
Tasso ;  both  of  them  also  seek  in  quite  oppo- 
site manners  to  mediate  the  recalcitrant 
super-sensitive  poet  with  his  environment 
and  with  himself. 

III.    This  peculiar  device,  accordingly,  of 


346          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

halving  a  whole  man  into  two  opposite  coun- 
terparts, each  of  which  is  a  personage,  is  also 
employed  in  the  two  women,  both  of  them 
characteristically  called  by  the  same  name 
Leonore,  which,  however,  separates  into  two 
family  titles.  Princess  Leonore  of  Este,  sister 
of  the  Duke,  and  Countess  Leonore  San- 
vitale  may  be  deemed  two  sides  of  one  whole 
woman,  and  in  other  ways  are  the  female  re- 
flection of  the  two  males.  The  one  Leonore 
(the  Countess)  is  the  designing  woman  with 
the  subtlest  insight  into  the  weakness  of  those 
about  her;  her  expressions  concerning  peo- 
ple and  things  are  the  keenest  and  brightest 
in  the  drama ;  Goethe  puts  into  her  mouth  the 
most  exquisite  lines  on  poetry  and  on  poets ; 
she  has  wit,  epigrammatic  terseness,  and 
usually  gives  the  best  advice  on  the  various 
emergencies  which  arise.  There  is,  no  'doubt, 
too,  that  she  takes  special  'delight  in  exercis- 
ing her  power.  She  has  a  husband  and  son, 
both  of  them  absent  and  never  appearing  but 
once  for  a  moment  in  the  field  of  her  con- 
sciousness. She  is  accordingly  wife  and 
mother,  but  these  relations  seem  quite  to  have 
dropped  out  of  her  life  at  Ferrara;  she  is 
seen  as  the  untrammeled  individual  exploit- 
ing her  unique  gifts  to  her  own  pleasure. 
Then  is  to  be  added  the  fact  that  she  is  in 
love  with  Tasso  after  her  fashion,  which  is 


i- 
TASSO.  347 

not  very  deep,  but  is  gratifying  to  her  ambi- 
tion, for  she  wishes  somehow  to  get  control 
of  the  famous  young  poet  and  direct  him  in 
her  leading-strings.  Cool  calculation  is  her 
trait,  yet  coupled  with  genuine  admiration, 
and  a  practical  side  which  hastens  to  help 
people  out  of  difficulty.  Tasso  does  not  quite 
like  her,  for  he  complains  that  he  always  feels 
her  intention  beneath  her  act,  and  her  inher- 
ent doubleness  repels  him. 

There  has  been  a  good  deal  of  discussion 
among  Goethe  commentators  concerning  the 
original  model  at  the  Weimar  court  for  Leon- 
ore  Sanvitale.  Some  have  thought  that  the 
Duchess  Amalia,  mother  of  Karl  August  was 
the  prototype.  This  is  very  doubtful  for  a 
number  of  reasons.  The  character  is  not 
unusual,  Goethe  must  have  met  a  good  deal 
of  this  sort  of  femininity  in  his  forays.  We 
believe  that  the  Countess  reveals  the  secret 
of  her  own  identity  when  she  implies  that  the 
two  characters,  Antonio  and  Tasso,  are  oppo- 
site sides  or  phases  of  one  man;  this  is  also 
the  case  with  Leonore  Sanvitale,  who  forms 
one  woman  with  her  counterpart.  It  would 
not  be  hard  to  show  that  Frau  Von  Stein  held 
both  these  opposing  characters  in  her  own 
one  Self. 

The  female  counterpart  of  the  Countess 
Leonore,  symmetrical  yet  opposite,  is  the 


348          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

Princess  Leonore.  A  profoundly  emotional 
and  sincere  nature  is  hers,  trained  by  long- 
suffering  and  the  sternest  discipline  of  life, 
which  has  now  mounted  up  to  quite  a  sum  of 
years.  Perhaps  her -deepest  and  most  winning 
trait  is  her  mediatorial  character,  finest  fruit- 
age of  her  much-tried  existence ;  she  will  har- 
monize the  collisions  around  her,  especially 
that  of  the  unhappy  ideal  soul  in  its  conflict 
with  the  merciless  reality.  It  is  on  this  side 
that  she  is  so  attractive  to  Tasso  and  indeed 
furnishes  to-  his  life  what  he  completely  lacks, 
adjustment  of  the  inner  to  the  outer  world. 
The  poet  flies  to  her  as  his  missing  part,  and 
the  result  is  a  unity  of  souls  at  their  primal 
fountain,  in  spite  of  the  obstacle  of  rank  and 
age.  Their  love  is  mutual,  but  it  has  a  fatal 
birth-mark  upon  it,  for  it  can  never  blossom 
out  into  the  flower  of  marriage.  Still  the 
Princess  will  keep  the  young  man  for  herself 
and  detain  him  at  the  Court  of  Ferrara  if 
possible,  wherein  she  shows  the  last  selfish- 
ness of  love.  It  is  at  this  point  that  between 
the  two  Leonores  an  antagonism  shows  itself, 
secret  and  suppressed  indeed,  but  active, 
which  may  be  felt  already  in  the  first  scene  of 
the  play.  She  will  try  to  mediate  the  sensi- 
tive and  irascible  poet  with  the  conditions  of 
life  at  court  through  their  mutual  oneness, 
through  love ;  but  this  is  just  what  Tasso  can 


TASSO.  349 

least  control  in  himself;  at  the  culminating 
moment  of  passion  he  tries  to  clasp  her  to  his 
bosom,  violates  at  its  most  sensitive  point  the 
courtly  propriety  which  she  had  tried  to  in- 
stil into  him,  and  now  he  has  to  leave.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  Princess,  in  spite  of  her 
strong  emotion,  has  revealed  that  love  is  not 
the  ultimate  principle  of  her  nature,  she  is 
not  ready  to  make  the  final  offering  to  it,  and 
so  she  too  is  rejected,  or  rather  rejects  her- 
self and  vanishes.  There  is  a  love  still  deeper 
than  hers,  she  cannot  be  the  last  mediator  of 
Tasso. 

It  may  be  added  that  here  Goethe  calls  up 
his  Werther  in  depicting  a  situation  of  im- 
possible love.  The  passion  is  present  with 
full  intensity  in  both  cases,  but  how  different 
the  expression!  Phileros  has  been  in  Italy 
and  has  become  classicized,  yea  formalized, 
into  courtly  ways.  Still  the  old  volcano  is 
in  him  and  breaks  forth  into  one  sudden  erup- 
tion— that  uncourtly  act  which  undoes  his 
love  but  saves  him,  driving  him  really  to  his 
self-redemption. 

Much  ingenuity  has  been  spent  by  German 
commentators  in  trying  to  identify  this  high- 
born personage  with  women  of  Goethe's  en- 
vironment at  Weimar.  Our  view  is  that  the 
Princess  is  the  Frau ,  Von  Stein  disguised 
in  the  mask  of  the  Duchess  Louise.  Undoubt- 


350          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

edly  many  points  can  be  picked  out  which  do 
not  fit  either  person.  But  that  is  a  part  of 
the  disguise.  The  attitude  of  the  Princess 
toward  Goethe  and  her  place  in  his  inner  life 
can  be  paralleled  surprisingly  in  many  pas- 
sages from  his  Letters  to  Frau  Von  Stein. 
This  has  been  generally  recognized.  But  the 
second  important  fact  in  this  connection  is 
that  the  other  Leonore  is  the  other  Frau  Von 
Stein,  that  is,  the  other  side  of  her  total 
womanhood,  for  she  too  had  abundance  of 
artifice,  calculation,  even  courtly  intrigue  in- 
terwoven with  a  strongly  emotional  and  rec- 
onciling nature.  She  had  also  a  genuine  in- 
tense love  for  her  poet  in  response  to  his  tem- 
pestuous outbursts,  and  sought  to  calm  him 
into  social  and  especially  courtly  proprieties, 
which  he  would  at  times  break  over.  And 
the  final  fact  is  also  true  of  her:  Goethe  at 
last  brushed  against  the  limit  of  her  love, 
and  mid  mighty  resurgences  of  pasion  re- 
solved to  quit  her  and  flee  to  Italy.  She  could 
not  mediate  him  ultimately  with  his  highest 
genius,  with  his  supreme  aspiration — he  had 
at  last  to  mediate  himself  through  his  Muse, 
as  is  reflected  in  Tasso  at  the  close  of  the 
drama.  So  the  Muse  is  ultimately  the  ideal 
woman  who  mediates  him  (Das  Ewig- 
WeiblicJie).  And  we  hold  that  the  two  Leon- 
ores  are  the  two  halves  which  Goethe  had  ex- 


TA880.  351 

perienced  in  the  double  nature  of  Frau  Von 
Stein,  neither  of  which  could  bring  to  him 
complete  reconciliation.  So  each  of  the 
Leonores,  seeking  to  mediate  the  poet  in  her 
way,  fails  at  Ferrara  and  fails  at  Weimar. 
He  must  go  back  to  his  God-given  creative 
power,  to  the  utterance  of  his  Genius,  for  his 
blessing. 

In  our  judgment,  at  this  point  lies  the 
distinctive  fact  of  the  play,  which  indeed 
might  be  wrought  out  to  greater  fulness  and 
clearness  than  we  find  it  here.  Tasso  is 
thrown  back  upon  himself  for  his  final  medi- 
ation; is  he  equal  to  the  new  crisis  of  his 
life  ?  We  think  that  he  is,  and  that  the  author 
shows  him  so ;  the  poet  is  going  to  reveal  the 
poet  not  destroyed  by  love,  but  able  to  medi- 
ate love's  deepest  conflicts  and  live.  Herein 
Tasso  is  not  a  Werther,  but  a  decided  ad- 
vance upon  the  early  novel.  Still  many  a 
reader  holds  that  the  poet  makes  the  poet 
tragic,  never  again  to  return  to  Ferrara  or 
Weimar. 

Such  are  the  two  sets  of  characters,  each  set 
composed  of  two  people,  of  the  same  sex,  but 
of  opposite  natures;  each  set  forming  one 
whole  personality  which  splits  in  twain. 
Then  there  is  another  fact  of  the  poetic  or- 
ganism :  the  four  form  two  pairs  opposite  in 
sex;  Antonio  shows  his  attachment  to  Leon- 


352    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

ore,  the  Countess,  who  coquets  with  him  in 
order  to  attain  her  deeper  end  of  winning 
the  control  of  Tasso.  Still  this  sexed  pair 
have  certain  decided  traits  in  common:  both 
are  designing  and  dissembling  of  their  de- 
sign, keen  to  perceive  and  use  human  weak- 
ness, and  can  indulge  in  light  amatory  sport. 
They  are  thus  drawn  in  emphatic  contrast  to 
the  two  other  lovers,  Tasso  and  the  Princess. 
But  Love  is  nowhere  the  triumphant  medi- 
ator in  this  drama  nor,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  tragic  destroyer.  Phileros  is  taught  a 
great  lesson;  having  run  up  against  an  ob- 
stacle, he  is  not  to  kill  himself,  but  to  mediate 
himself  through  the  deepest  principle  of  his 
nature,  his  poetic  genius.  Werther  could  not 
do  this,  for  he  was  no  poet,  but  only  the  lover. 
Eichard  Wagner,  who  was  also  a  mighty 
lover,  indeed  the  very  Phileros  of  music,  has 
left  on  record  his  view  of  this  drama:  "for 
the  one  who  sees  to  the  bottom  there  is  here 
properly  one  conflict,  that  between  Tasso  and 
the  Princess.  To  the  deep-looking  mind  the 
conflict  between  Antonio  and  Tasso  is  of  less 
interest. '  *  Very  true ;  still  this  conflict  is  not 
one  of  life  and  death,  for  the  poet,  though 
prostrated  in  the  struggle,  gets  up  again,  rec- 
onciling himself  through  the  self-portrayal 
of  his  defeat  by  means  of  his  art. 
Thus  Tasso  is  the  drama  of  the  artist  him- 


TASSO.  353 

self,  who  makes  his  art  the  instrument  of  his 
spiritual  salvation.  True  it  is  that  art  should 
also  furnish  the  means  of  bodily  sustenance 
to  the  man  who  practices  it;  but  that  is  the 
case  with  every  handicraft.  Perhaps  the  best 
lesson  to  be  won  from  this  work  is  that  every 
writer  who  realizes  the  worth  of  his  vocation, 
employs  it  not  merely  to  earn  his  bread  and 
butter,  but  to  save  his  soul  from  perdition. 
Every  book  that  has  ultimate  value  shows  the 
purgatorial  landmark  of  its  author  in  his 
struggle  against  the  fall  of  man,  and  his  tri- 
umph over  some  fate-drawn  limit  of  his  own 
nature.  Goethe  has  often  told  us  how  he  has 
rescued  himself  from  his  own  Furies  by  his 
power  of  self -utterance  in  poetry.  So  every 
man  is  to  elevate  his  vocation,  however  hum- 
ble, into  the  way  of  his  redemption.  Other- 
wise, he  is  going  to  live  in  Hell-fire  his  whole 
life,  however  it  may  be  in  the  future. 

All  this,  we  may  repeat,  is  hardly  more 
than  glimpsed  in  Tasso  at  the  very  close,  but 
we  shall  see  more  of  it  in  later  works. 

The  Trilogy.  It  is  worth  while  again  to 
emphasize  the  fact  that  the  three  foregoing 
dramas-  are  intimately  bound  together  by 
many  links,  and  form  what  we  call  a  Trilogy. 
They  run  quite  parallel  in  origin,  develop- 
ment, and  completion,  overarching  the  poet  ?s 
past  creative  life  from  Frankfort,  through 


354  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

Weimar,  to  Italy.  Thus  they  impart  a  strik- 
ing lesson  in  his  evolution,  and  take  their 
place  as  a  significant  component  of  his  life- 
poem  which  we  are  trying  to  mark  out  in  its 
main  outlines. 

Separately  they  should  be  read,  and  then 
put  together  as  one  work  or  one  supreme 
manifestation  of  Goethe 's  genius,  which  lies 
between  and  connects  his  earlier  outburst  in 
Gotz  and  Werther,  and  his  later  mature  mas- 
terpieces, Meister  and  Faust.  They  realize 
and  conclude  certain  incipient  phases  of  the 
Frankfort  Epoch  in  which  they  have  budded, 
but  they  are  also  prophetic  of  much  which 
lies  as  yet  unborn,  in  the  poet's  future.  They 
are  strictly  held  within  dramatic  bounds, 
hence  we  feel  in  them  all  a  confinement  or 
limitation  compared  to  the  younger  or  older 
Goethe.  He  keeps  inside  the  prescribed  lim- 
its of  his  dramatic  art,  one  of  the  immediate 
results  of  his  classic  Italian  training,  which 
he  will  later  transcend. 

Still  not  one  of  the  three  is  a  good  acting- 
play,  each  is  lacking  in  the  external  require- 
ments. They  are  inner  dramas  made  for  the 
soul's  stage;  the  scenic  effects  move  on  the 
mind's  retina,  less  on  the  eye's.  Even  Eg- 
mont,  the  most  boisterous  action  of  the  three, 
appeals  more  to  the  reader  than  to  the  spec- 
tator, who  has  no  time  to  go  back  and  reflect 


FJL&89.  355 

upon  niceties  of  idiom,  of  character,,  of  or- 
ganization. Still  less  can  he  detect  the  real 
underlying  personality,  namely.,  Goethe  Jtim- 
self  in  one  of  his  confessions  disguised  as 
Egmont  or  Orestes  or  Tasso,  All  this  de- 
mands an  inward-turning,  not  outward. 

Their  rapid  production  indicates  that 
Goethe  has  recovered  his  creative  power  in 
and  through  Italy,  from  his  long  Weimar  par- 
alysis. Freed  of  the  grinding  routine  of  of- 
ficialdom, of  a  fateful  love,  and  of  an  oppres- 
sive nature  laden  with  fog,  cloud  and  cold, 
his  Genius  rises  from  its  living  grave  to  a 
fresh  resurrection.  Thus  his  Italian  environ- 
ment gives  him  just  the  spiritual  food  he 
craves  and  stimulates  him  to  life's  renewaL 
The  diagnosis  of  his  case  was  correct,  as  well 
as  the  prescribed  medicine  for  those  "phys- 
ico-moral  ills"  which  sickened  his  productive 
energy  in  Germany.  In  these  three  dramas, 
then,  we  hehold  the  giant  springing  up  from 
his  prostration  and  again  taking  possession 
of  his  true  birthright. 

The  classicized  form  of  two  of  them, 
Ipkigema  and  Tasso,  is  shown  externally  in 
the  meter,  this  being  the  Goethean  transform- 
ation of  Shakespeare's  blank-verse,  which  had 
been  known  to  our  poet  from  youth,  but  poet- 
ically left  untried  till  he  reached  the  classic 
atmosphere  of  Italy.  One  queries,  why  this 


356  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

long  delay  in  finding  such  a  manifest  poetic 
implement?  The  fact  is  that  English  blank- 
verse,  which  came  to  Shakespeare  in  its 
early  freshness,  was  a  product  of  the  Renas- 
cence, and  this  chiefly  belongs  to  Italy.  Some- 
how Goethe  felt  himself  at  the  fountain-head 
of  a  new  metrical  form,  and  was  first  stirred 
to  reproduce  it  on  Italian  soil,  saturating  it 
deeply  with  the  harmonies  of  his  own  soul. 
Thus  Iphigenia  and  Tasso  have  a  metrical 
power  which  is  unique  "even  in  Goethe,  and 
it  may  be  added,  in  literature.  Such  is  their 
first  and  most  permanent  charm — their  woo- 
ing words  seem  to  caress  the  thought  in  meas- 
ured cadences  of  manifold  harmony.  This 
poetic  music  seems  to  have  been  imparted 
directly  to  Goethe  by  melodious  Italy,  for 
never  afterwards  could  he  quite  recover  its 
soulful  strain.  For  instance,  the  blank-verse 
of  his  Natural  Daughter,  written  some  years 
later,  has  largely  lost  the  Italian  musical 
witchery  of  the  two  dramas  composed  in  the 
echoes  of  the  classic  land. 

We  have  already  noted  that  the  three  lead- 
ing men  of  these  plays  rise  in  gradation  till 
they  -culminate  in  Tasso,  the  self-mediated 
poet.  In  like  manner  the  three  leading 
women,  Clara,  Iphigenia,  and  the  Princess, 
may  be  compared  in  regard  to  their  power  of 
mediation.  But  underneath  all  these  charac- 


.*• 

GOETHE'S  LIVING  DRAMA.  357 

ters  is  the  one,  Goethe  himself  at  his  confes- 
sional, and  he  is  giving  utterance  to  that 
deepest  element  of  his  nature,  love.  Phileros 
is  writing  these  dramas  for  the  alleviation  of 
his  past  conflicts  still  throbbing  painfully  in 
the  present. 

But  now  drops  down  into  his  life  startlingly 
a  fresh  violation  involving  a  deeper  trans- 
gression than  any  yet  it  has  committed,  and 
therewith  a  heavier  and  longer  penalty.  Thus 
Phileros  starts  a  wholly  new  strain  in  this 
fate-recording  life-poem  of  his,  already  quite 
diversified. 


II. 

Goethe's  Living  Drama. 

We  have  just  been  contemplating  Goethe's 
written  drama,  the  Trilogy,  which  poetizes 
salient  lines  of  his  past  career  and  which  rises 
up  mountainous  about  midway  in  the  total 
sweep  of  his  fourscore  years  and  more.  But 
now  we  are  to  set  forth  his  unwritten 
drama,  making  it  an  essential  part  of  his  en- 
tire life-poem,  which  was  lived  by  him  as  well 
as  lettered  in  his  books.  In  fact  this  unwrit- 
ten drama  of  his  became  the  hidden  source  of 
much  that  he  afterwards  wrote;  but  he  him- 
self was  its  continuous  actor  as  long  as  he 
lived,  and  he  played  it  before  the  whole  world 


358  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

and  all  time  with  a  gigantic  defiance  and 
mightiness.  In  one  view  it  is  a  perpetual 
tragedy,  whose  unique  tragic  hero  is  the  poet 
himself  who  in  the  very  clutch  of  Fate  reveals 
himself  the  Fate-compeller  of  his  own  life's 
tragedy. 

So  we  have  now  come  to  the  most  singular 
action  of  the  poet  during  his  entire  career, 
the  best-known  occurrence  pertaining  "to  him, 
and  repeated  by  many  tongues  whose  brains 
have  little  or  no  acquaintance  with  his  writ- 
ings. Phileros,  the  lover,  aye  the  lover  of 
Love,  is  now  led  by  the  ruling  passion  of  his 
nature  to  commit  the  offence  which  turns  his 
very  love  to  a  tragedy  never-ending  while  his 
breath  holds  out,  and  always  getting  more 
and  more  actively  interwound  with  his  deep- 
est being.  The  result  is  that  Goethe  himself, 
after  his  Italian  Journey  till  his  last  pulse- 
beat,  becomes  on  one  side  of  his  existence  a 
tragic  character,  yea  the  chief  tragic  charac- 
ter in  his  own  life-poem,  and  as  such  we  have 
now  to  introduce  him  at  this  point.  We  call 
it  a  life-tragedy  because  it  was  alive  and  go- 
ing-on,  not  an  houred  drama  which  he  wrote 
out  and  finished  for  the  stage,  or  for  the 
reader,  like  the  three  which  we  have  just  con- 
sidered. It  was  an  ever-living,  stayless  action 
which  continued  recurring  all  his  days  with 
manifold  repetition  and  variation.  And  we 


GOETHE'S  LIVING  DRAMjf.'  359 

must  add  that  this  tragedy  did  not  conclude 
with  his  death,  but  kept  up  its  fatal  swoop 
afterward,  clutching  even  his  grandchildren, 
as  they  recognized  and  said.  Thus  he  makes 
himself  a  Tantalus  through  his  sin  against 
the  Divine  Order,  and  begets  a  family  of  Tan- 
talids.  Blame  him  not,  excuse  him  not,  but 
let  the  fact  tell  itself  in  its  full  round  of  trans- 
gression and  suffering,  of  guilt  and  punish- 
ment, of  Hell  and  Heaven. 

Goethe,  solitary,  feeling  himself  neglected 
and  isolated,  was  taking  a  walk  in  the  Wei- 
mar Park  less  than  a  month  after  his  return 
from  Italy,  for  which  he  was  probably  in  a 
state  of  deep  longing,  being  separated  from 
its  art,  its  genial  sunshine,  and  its  free  life. 
Then  Phileros  at  Weimar  had  no  love,  the 
light  of  his  existence ;  Frau  Von  Stein,  paled 
and  crumpled  with  the  years,  was  tran- 
scended; the  other  lesser  stars  of  his  former 
time  gave  no  sheen.  He,  a  man  in  his  phys- 
ical prime,  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight,  rejuve- 
nated and  indeed  reborn  (he  said)  by  the  trip 
to  Italy  could  not  help  brooding  over  Rome 
and  its  treasures ;  but  especially  with  the  en- 
ergy of  youthful  imagination  he  called  up  his 
Roman  love-life,  and  its  central  figure  who 
has  already  flitted  before  under  the  name  of 
Faustina.  And  then  who  appears  to  him  just 
at  the  right  moment  in  all  the  living  fullness 


360          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

of  flesh  and  blood  with  red  cheeks  and  spark- 
ling eyes,  as  it  were  leaping  into  the  place  of 
that  empty  far-away  phastasm,  and  accosting 
him  with  the  tender  voice  of  supplication? 
Yes,  who  is  it — for  of  all  the  incidents  of  Goe- 
the 's  career,  amatory  and  otherwise,  this  is 
to  have  the  farthest-reaching,  deepest-search- 
ing consequences. 

Her  name  is  Christiane  Vulpius,  a  young 
woman  just  turned  of  three  and  twenty,  who 
crosses  the  poet's  path  at  this  conjuncture, 
and  hands  him  a  petition  for  her  brother  who 
is  out  of  work  and  asks  the  man  of  influence 
for  a  place.  This  brother  had  studied  at  the 
University  and  was  the  author  of  some  tales 
and  poems  by  which  he  sought  to  support 
himself  and  his  sisters.  Later  he  gave  to  the 
world  a  famous  robber-story  Rinaldo  Rinal- 
dini,  the  delight  of  boys,  which  was  published 
about  the  same  time  that  Goethe's  Wilhelm 
Meister's  Apprenticeship  came  out,  and  far 
outstripped  the  work  of  his  great  brother-in- 
law  in  immediate  saleability,  if  not  in  ever- 
lastingness.  But  the  real  petition  which 
Phileros  heard  was  that  of  love  throbbing  out 
of  the.  prayerful  words  and  looks  of  the  ma- 
ture young  woman.  Both  sides  were  ready 
and  in  deep  need  of  each  other,  so  down  comes 
the  Love-God  and  fetters  their  hearts  in  his 
invisible  chain  so  that  neither  can  get  away. 


. 
GOETHE'S  LIVING  DRAMA.  361 

Such  was  our  world-famous  Christiane,  a 
bright,  plump  little  blonde,  with  winsome  blue 
eyes  and  a  round  full  face  enwreathed  in  mas- 
sive brown  locks.  A  sketch  of  her  by  Goe- 
the about  1789  has  been  found  which  shows 
her  countenance  peeping  out  rather  roguishly 
from  under  her  enveloping  shock  of  loose 
hair.  She  was  a  work-girl,  being  compelled 
to  earn  her  own  living  in  a  factory  of  artifi- 
cial flowers;  she  bore  an  honest  name,  all 
later  gossip  to  the  contrary  was  doubtless  the 
product  of  malice  or  envy.  For  she,  with  her 
little  pin-hook,  had  caught  the  biggest  fish  in 
the  Weimar  social  pool,  where  many  fisher- 
women  of  the  higher  classes  sat  waiting  for 
a  nibble.  Jealousy  will  not  fail  to  sharpen 
that  female  poniard,  the  tongue,  to  its  keen- 
est point.  And  good  reason  they  have,  for 
they  can  claim  to  be  defending  their  own 
hearth  and  its  institution  against  the  deepest 
violation  of  its  sanctity. 

Let  the  result  be  told :  On  the  13th  of  July, 
1788,  the  distinguished  poet,  the  high  aristo- 
cratic official  celebrates  with  the  humble  folk- 
girl  what  he  calls  his  "marriage  of  con- 
science, "  being  not  yet  four  weeks  at  home 
from  Italy.  The  day  he  afterwards  observed 
as  the  anniversary  of  his  "nuptials  without 
ceremony, ' '  the  nature  of  which  he  hints  in  a 
letter  to  his  friend  Schiller.  But  the  affair 


362          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

did  not  stop  at  this  point.  The  girl  had  won 
his  heart  as  well  as  stilled  his  sensuous  ap- 
peal; her  sunny  looks  and  cheery  ways  had 
lit  up  his  gloom,  companioned  his  solitude; 
she  had  brought  back  to  him  Home  and  radi- 
ant Italy.  At  once  the  poetry  begins  to  flow 
in  gleeful  vein  which  transfuses  old  Rome 
into  modern  Weimar,  classic  measures  into 
German  speech,  and  especially  Eoman  Faus- 
tina into  Teutonic  Christiane.  Thus  Phileros 
the  lover  now  poetizes  his  soul's  frisky  iri- 
descent fancies  into  ancient  hexametral  forms 
of  the  antique  world,  endowing  them  with  a 
more  rapturous  life  than  they  ever  possessed 
in  their  native  land.  Goethe's  Roman  Elegies 
celebrate  not  only  his  "marriage  of  con- 
science," but  chant  the  most  internal  poetic 
epithalamium  of  the  ancient  wedded  to  the 
modern  spirit  known  in  literature.  That  sim- 
ple Teutonic  maiden  had  the  power  of  Teu- 
tonizing  again  the  estranged  classic  Goethe, 
and  of  making  him  pour  forth  in  native  tones 
the  wedlock  not  only  of  two  persons,  but  of 
two  worlds  as  it  were  in  love's  embrace.  But, 
0  Phileros,  forget  not  the  counterstroke  of 
the  law  amid  happiness  forbidden. 

Not  long  afterwards  Goethe  takes  this  bride 
of  his  conscience  to  his  abode  and  installs  her 
as  the  mistress  of  his  home,  where,  on  Decem- 
ber 25,  1789,  his  first  child,  August  Goethe, 


GOETHE'S  LIVING  DRAMA.  363 

was  born,  the  earliest  scion  of  the  House  of 
Tantalus,  of  fateful  memory.  The  infant 
was  baptized  two  days  later  by  Herder,  the 
court  preacher,  while  the  Duke  of  Weimar 
stood  as  god-father.  Thus  the  anxious  and 
probably  foreboding  parent  sought  to  invoke 
for  his  uninstitutional  offspring  the  favor  of 
those  two  primal  institutions,  Church  and 
State,  whose  laws  he  had  deeply  violated  or 
rather  defied  by  his  deed.  We  learn  that  amid 
his  great  joy  he  felt  overwhelmed  with  his 
great  responsibility.  Well  he  may,  for  has  he 
not  brought  a  human  being  unlawfully  into  a 
world  ruled  by  law  which  judges  and  inflicts 
the  penalty  of  man's  infraction?  Could  he, 
as  a  poet  visioning  the  regnant  order  of  the 
universe,  help  asking:  Will  there  be  any  re- 
quital of  my  deed  upon  me  and  mine  in  the 
upper  Tribunal  of  Justice?  What  was  he 
thinking  about  even  at  the  baptismal  font! 
We  have  already  witnessed  Goethe's  power 
of  forecast  in  his  Hymn  of  the  Fates  as  it 
preluded  the  destinies  of  the  Tantalids  in  his 
Iphigenia. 

Thus  the  act,  starting  apparently  as  a  lit- 
tle escapade  with  a  work-girl  who  met  him  in 
a  public  place,  grew  portentously  by  adding 
one  violation  to  another  till  it  became  Goe- 
the's most  daring  and  persistent  defiance 
of  the  ethical  consciousness  of  society. 


364          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

Strangely  he  drops  back  into  his  Titanic 
mood,  and  we  may  well  deem  it  his  culminat- 
ing deed  of  Titanism,  taking  this  to  mean  his 
open  challenge  of  the  institutional  world.  We 
have  designated  his  Frankfort  Epoch,  the 
time  of  Gotz  and  Wertlier,  as  the  peculiar 
stage  of  his  Titanic  protest  which  he  set  down 
in  writing ;  while  the  Weimar  Decennium  was 
emphatically  his  training  out  of  his  recalci- 
trant anti-social  temper.  Italy  still  further 
laid  upon  his  character  and  poetry  its  spell  of 
classic  serenity  and  order.  In  fact  he  had 
fallen  out  with  his  former  volcanic  self,  and 
disliked  its  expression-  in  literary  production 
which  was  still  alive,  for  instance  in  Schiller's 
early  plays.  But  now  comes  the  strange  re- 
lapse into  a  transcended  state  of  his  former 
self — a  dozen  years  after  his  proper  Titanism 
he  does  the  most  Titanic  act  of  his  whole  life, 
yea  of  his  time.  He,  the  highest  spokesman 
of  Literature,  the  first  official  of  the  State,  the 
greatest  Genius  of  the  age,  suddenly  assumes 
an  attitude  defiant  of  man's  basic  institution, 
and  indeed  of  the  total  social  fabric.  For  it 
is  no  sudden  whiff  of  passionate  indulgence, 
no  hidden  illicit  relation,  but  publicly  assumed 
and  persisted  in  to  the  last,  even  if  at  first  he 
tried  to  conceal  it.  He  flung  openly  his  action 
of  demonic  insolence  into  the  face  of  Ger- 
many, of  Europe,  yea  of  all  time  on  account 


GOETHE'S  LIVING  DRAMA.  365 

of  the  eternal  greatness  of  the  man,  and  there 
it  stands  today,  a  most  important  node  of  his 
life-poem,  unfolding  into  tragic  catastrophes 
doomful  as  those  of  the  ancient  Houses  of 
Laius  or  Pelops.  Already  it  has  been  said 
that  he  has  re-enacted  the  deed  of  old  Tanta- 
lus guilty  of  arrogance  toward  the  Gods — a 
designation  of  himself  doubtless  sprung  from 
his  own  lips. 

It  is  true  that  many  years  afterward,  in  a 
moment  of  great  external  trial  and  anxiety, 
he  seeks  some  adjustment  to  law  and  institu- 
tion by  formally  marrying  his  Christiane  and 
legimating  his  son,  then  nearly  seventeen 
years  old,  who  was  present  at  the  ceremony. 
But  the  fatal  deed  had  been  done  and  its 
tragic  fruits  had  been  maturing  with  the 
march  of  time,  whereof  the  record  will  be 
given  hereafter.  And  that  youth,  an  institu- 
tional outcast  through  the  act  of  his  father, 
what  doom  might  he  not  hear  even  in  the  wed- 
ding-bells ! 

Phileros  has  now  consummated  the  deed 
which  lay  inherent  in  his  nature  without  the 
corrective  of  an  institutional  order,  which  is 
indeed  above  him,  but  which  is  really  what 
secures  him  and  his  at  last.  The  lover  of 
Love,  taken  by  himself,  is  fated,  and  Goethe 
simply  pushed  forward  to  the  extreme  reali- 
zation of  what  was  born  in  him.  Again  and 


366    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

again  he  will  get  the  counterstroke  of  his  con- 
duct, and  will  record  it  indirectly,  and  will 
through  self-expression  escape  destiny.  It  is 
a  curious  fact  that  the  poet  has  never  directly 
dramatized  or  even  recorded  his  life-tragedy, 
though  fragments  of  it  we  can  trace  under 
numerous  alien  forms.  But  his  life-poem  can- 
not neglect  this  deepest  strain  of  his  total 
career.  Here,  too,  it  must  be  noted  that  Goe- 
the always  showed  the  power  of  parrying  the 
mortal  back- thrust  of  his  own  deed;  the  gift 
of  his  Genius  was  to  utter  his  fate  and  there- 
by transcend  it,  and  live  on.  The  deadly 
Parcas  often  gripped  him  and  made  him  suffer 
terribly,  but  could  not  hold  him  in  their  clutch 
of  death,  till  the  whole  cycle  of  his  existence 
had  rounded  itself  out  to  its  last  complete- 
ness in  his  eighty-third  year.  But  all  the  rest 
of  his  Family  were  not  Fate-compellers  like 
him,  they  could  not  expiate  through  a  divine 
gift  the  curse  lowering  upon  their  House; 
they  perished  tragically  as  TantalidsJ  even  if 
they  were  the  children  of  the  self -redeeming 
Tantalus. 

Soon  Goethe  began  to  feel  the  social  pen- 
alty of  his  conduct.  All  Weimar  was  roused 
to  indignant  gossip  which  encircled  its  most 
famous  man  wherever  he  went.  Especially 
the  women,  the  natural  guardians  of  the  fam- 
ily 's  honor,  were  in  a  state  of  frenzied  revolt, 


.*• 

GOETHE' '8  LIVING  DRAMA.  367 

and  hissed  with  tongues  of  venom,  like  a  nest 
of  rattlesnakes,  especially  at  poor  Christiane, 
more  the  victim  than  the  victimizer.  Her  boy, 
even  in  his  baby-carriage,  became  a  center  of 
buzzing,  malicious  whispers  which  wafted  to 
him  his  irregular  birth.  What  a  fatal  atmos- 
phere for  the  innocent  child  to  grow  up  in, 
where  everybody  would  know  and  tattle  his 
blotted  history !  Still,  underneath  all  the  mal- 
ice and  jealousy  of  evil  hearts,  we  may  see 
the  violated  institution  using  its  weapons  of 
defense  and  punishment.  It  was  the  mad- 
dened cry  of  the  true  instituted  Family  in  a 
furious  battle  against  its  destroyer  now  rep- 
resented in  the  negative  Family  of  Goethe. 
Let  the  scandal-monger  do  her  worst.  She  is 
now  scandalizing  scandal  itself,  and  burning 
up  Hell  in  its  own  brimstone.  So,  according 
to  the  old  legend,  the  Devil  is  just  the  one 
whose  function  is  to  punish  deviltry. 

Of  all  these  female  tongues,  that  of  Frau 
Von  Stein  was  the  most  sibilant  and  poison- 
ous, and  with  no  little  reason.  She,  the  aris- 
tocratic, highly  cultured  lady,  had  been  sup- 
planted in  the  heart  of  her  poetic  lover  by  an 
ordinary  folk-girl  without  rank  or  education. 
Goethe,  well  knowing  her  power  of  sting  in 
speech,  and  sympathizing  with  her  situation, 
and  probably  feeling  a  prick  of  remorse, 
sought  to  console  her  and  to  retain  still  some 


368  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

hold  in  her  affection,  even  if  she,  now  a  wilted 
rose  of  more  than  forty,  was  to  play  second 
to  his  young  blooming  odalisk.  Not  a  bit  of 
it ;  she  took  sick  in  her  distress,  wrote  him  a 
letter  of  final  separation,  and  hurried  off  to 
a  watering-place  for  recovery.  When  she  re- 
turns, she  becomes  the  rancorous  censor  of 
all  Goethe's  shortcomings,  and  they  were  cer- 
tainly a  fertile  theme.  She  writes  a  little 
drama  with  the  title  of  Dido,  filling  Vergil's 
picture  of  the  forsaken  woman  with  her  own 
woe  and  bitterness.  In  venomous  scorn  she 
satirizes  even  his  bodily  shape  with  its  fresh 
corpulency,  and  sneers  at  his  utter  degrada- 
tion of  spirit,  making  him  say,  "I  count  my- 
self now  among  the  worms,  and  find  my  great- 
est pleasure  in  living  with  vermin" — a  hit  at 
humble  Christiane.  She  goes  so  far  as  to  call 
him  a  Faun  "with  horned  head  and  hoofed 
feet,  to  whom  no  vow  is  holy. ' '  Thus  she  fills 
all  Weimar  with  her  vengeful  outcries,  and 
coins  stinging  epithets  for  every  unbridled 
tongue  of  the  town,  while  she,  like  ancient 
Cassandra  of  Troy,  utters  frantic  prophe- 
cies of  evil  for  this  newest  House  of  Tanta- 
lus. And  her  uncanny  bodements  of  coming 
ill  were  based  upon  the  terrible  fact,  and  in 
one  way  or  other  marched  toward  fulfilment. 
While  August  Goethe  was  still  a  mere  boy, 
she  gave  a  startling  outlook  upon  his  fate. 


GOETHE'S  LIVING  DRAMA.  369 

Truly  in  Goethe's  life-poem  she  enacts  the 
part  of  a  maddened  sybil  who  mirrors  in 
frenzied  forecast  the  consequences  of  Ms 
deed. 

Thus  Phileros,  loving  his  Love  without  the 
restraint  and  the  oversight  of  law  and  insti- 
tution, has  done  the  culminating  act  of  his 
career,  having  carried  out  to  its  ultimate  re- 
sult what  we  have  already  seen  to  be  the  in- 
nermost elemental  power  of  his  nature. 
Herewith,  we  repeat,  his  real  tragedy  of  life 
opens,  a  very  long  but  unwritten  drama  of 
retribution,  suffering,  and  fatality  which 
involves  not  only  himself  but  his  entire  be- 
gotten family  to  its  last  member.  Of  course 
Anti-Phileros  has  seized  upon  this  act  with 
gloating  avidity  and  preached  many  a  sermon 
of  sulphurous  damnation  against  our  sinning 
Phileros.  Only  too  true,  we  have  often  to  cry 
out;  still  such  is  not  our  way.  We  shall  not 
bemoralize  the  in  itself  dooming  deed  with 
unctuous  reflections,  but  let  it  work  itself  out 
in  its  own  time  and  manner  that  it  may  show 
what  it  really  is — the  doer's  life-tragedy 
which  tells  on  itself  in  its  long  line  of  tragic 
consequences.  Thus  the  poet  enacts  a  work 
of  art  in  his  life,  which  becomes  an  essential 
constituent  of  his  total  life-poem.  We  cannot 
well  puritanize  Goethe,  he  will  not  fit  into 
such  a  world-view.  We  have  already  seen  him 


370          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

anguishing,  confessing,  and  punishing  him- 
self in  his  vicarious  literary  Purgatory,  and 
there  winning  atonement,  or  at  least  relief. 
In  his  writ  at  its  best  he  makes  himself  a 
world-judge  over  his  deed  and  metes  the  pen- 
alty to  his  vice-gerent  characters,  and  thus 
saves  himself.  So  we  shall  let  Goethe  etliicize 
himself  (in  the  right  sense  of  the  term),  be- 
holding him  summon  himself  before  the  ob- 
jective institutional  tribunal  of  the  ages,  and 
there  passing  judgment  upon  himself  for  his 
transgression.  That  is  a  very  different  thing 
from  moralizing  him  according  to  some  sub- 
jective standard  or  possibly  prejudice  of  our 
own. 

The  deeply  suggestive  fact  has  already 
been  noticed  that  Goethe  had  a  lurking  pre- 
monition of  this  deed  and  its  consequences 
before  it  took  place.  He,  as  Phileros,  could 
hardly  help  feeling  far  down  in  his  underself 
the  possibility  of  his  present  action.  One 
thinks  that  he  must  have  been  haunted  by  that 
Fate-forecasting  Hymn  of  the  Fates,  a  pro- 
phetic song  of  himself  welling  up  from  the 
last  depths  of  his  Genius,  which  doomfully 
forewarns  him  against  committing  the  grand 
deed  of  insolence  against  the  Gods  who 
whelm  the  violator  into  gloomy  Tartarean 
abysses.  To  be  sure  all  this  is  told  myth- 
ically, throwing  a  far-away  uncanny  shadow 


GOETHE'S  LIVING  DRAMA.  *  371 

upon  things  to  be.  As  he  looked  upon  his 
new-born  babe,  could  he  not  hear  the  awful 
reverberation  of  his  own  words  from  within : 

His  children's  doom  he  ponders 
And  bows  down  his  head. 

Nearly  two  generations  later,  and  long 
after  the  death  of  Goethe,  his  grandson 
writes  in  a  letter :  Das  Reich  der  Eumeniden 
geU  zu  Ende  (Engel's  Goethe,  p.  581).  The 
rule  (or  realm)  of  the  Furies  is  drawing  to 
a  close,  having  gripped  its  last  victim  in  that 
grandson  who  tells  his  own  doom.'  Thus  ends 
the  House  of  Tantalus,  or  the  life-tragedy  of 
Goethe,  still  working  in  its  sole  survivor. 

But  let  us  turn  back  to  the  more  agreeable 
and  more  immediate  result  of  this  problemat- 
ical match.  Christiane  brought  cheer  and 
company  to  the  downcast  and  isolated  Goe- 
the, she  filled  in  part  and  for  a  time  the  social 
chasm  made  by  his  Italian  Journey.  She 
looked  after  his  household,  she  attended  to 
his  little  wants,  she  made  a  home  for  the 
homeless  man,  something  which  he  had  never 
fully  enjoyed  before,  not  even  in  the  house  of 
his  parents  at  Frankfort.  There  is  abundant 
evidence  that  Christiane  was  a  genuine  Ger- 
man home-maker,  and  thus  laid  a  solid  foun- 
dation for  Goethe's  attachment,  even  if  in 
later  years  she  degenerated.  Senses  and 


372    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

heart  she  could  gratify,  but  she  could  not  re- 
spond to  the  highest  part  of  his  being,  namely 
the  poetic  and  intellectual.  For  this  he  had 
to  go  elsewhere.  Still  some  of  his  best  lyric 
poetry  was  written  in  her  honor,  indicating 
how  closely  she  was  tied  to  his  passion  and  his 
heart.  A  true  marriage-  of  the  higher  order 
has  three  capital  links  uniting  the  pair:  the 
sensuous,  the  emotional  and  the  spiritual,  the 
latter  being  more  the  eternal  element  which 
indeed  eternizes  the  other  two  with  its  ageless 
dower.  Christiane  could  in  no  adequate  man- 
ner supply  this  uppermost  link;  the  result 
was  as  she  grew  old,  the  bond  grew  old  and 
both  fell  apart  though  in  different  ways ;  they 
were  not  everlastingly  wedlocked  in  the  triple 
link  of  passion,  heart,  and  spirit. 

As  Goethe  has  often  declared  that  life  is 
symbolical,  and  especially  that  his  own  was 
such,  we  inquire  what  did  his  marriage  with 
Christiane  represent?  She,  the  simple  Teu- 
tonic folk-girl  was  joined  to  the  classic  Olym- 
pian Goethe,  or  at  least  when  he  was  in  his 
most  intense  classic  mood.  Will  he  indicate 
any  such  union  in  the  deepest  layer  of  his  be- 
ing, in  his  poetic  Genius?  Will  he  strive  to 
marry  Italy  with  Teutonia  in  his  art,  sym- 
bolical of  what  he  had  done  in  his  life  ?  Much 
later  in  the  Second  Part  of  Faust  he  brings  to- 
gether German  Faust  and  Greek  Helen  in  love 


.¥- 

GOETHE'S  CLASSIC  MEASURES  IN  GERMAN.      373 

and  marriage,  a  conscious  symbol  of  the  con- 
junction and  interfusion  of  the  classic  and 
northern  spirits.  But  now  the  Hellenic  form- 
world  of  which  he  has  become  the  actual  em- 
bodiment, is  personally  wedded  to  and  living 
with  the  Teutonic  sense-world.  As  he  must 
always  experience  what  he  writes,  let  us  see 
how  he  poetizes  this  ultimate  fact  of  his  pres- 
ent life. 

•III. 

Goethe's  Classic  Measures  in  German. 

The  most  unique  poetic  achievement  of  Goe- 
the during  the  present  Epoch,  which  is  the 
first  after  his  return  from  Italy,  lies  in  the 
fact  that  he  now  makes  classic  measures  talk 
German,  and  thus  widens  the  horizon  of  all 
Teutonic  versification,  not  excepting  English, 
which  might  herein  take  a  weighty  lesson 
from  him,  even  if  it  has  failed  to  do  so  as  yet. 
The  ancient  meter  which  he  chiefly  employed 
at  this  time  was  the  hexameter  of  which  he 
uses  two  forms :  the  pure  and  the  elegiac.  The 
pure  hexameter  has  six  regular  beats,  each  of 
which  may  be  followed  by  one  or  two  unac- 
cented syllables.  Let  it  here  be  noted  that 
Goethe  does  not  try  to  quantify  his  measures, 
like  the  ancient  poets,  but  proceeds  by  accent 
in  accord  with  the  nature  of  Teutonic  Ian- 


374  GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

guages.  Still  the  effect  is  hexametral,  hav- 
ing a  classic  echo  even  in  our  modern  speech. 
Such  is  indeed  its  greatest  charm  when  skill- 
fully constructed.  Thus  in  the  meter,  the 
outer  garb,  we  find  an  intermarriage  of  the 
old  and  new,  of  the  Classic  and  Teutonic. 

The  second  kind  of  hexameter  used  by  Goe- 
the at  this  time  is  the  elegiac,  which  takes 
one  pure  and  one  abbreviated  hexameter  and 
puts  them  into  a  distieh.  Both  lines  have  the 
six  beats  of  the  hexameter,  but  the  second  line 
rejects  the  unaccented  syllables  at  the  end 
and  in  the  middle,  hence  it  is  often  called  a 
pentameter.  This  elegiac  measure  is  the  one 
that  Goethe  employs  in  his  Roman  Elegies, 
already  alluded  to,  which  celebrate  the  full 
sensuous  glow  of  his  union  with  Christiane. 
And  here  we  may  note  the  underlying  sym- 
bolism of  this  group  of  poems.  They  start 
when  the  deeply  classicized  Goethe  meets, 
within  a  few  weeks  after  his  return  from 
Italy,  the  German  maiden  Christiane,  and 
forms  with  her  his  tender  alliance.  Thus  in 
the  two  persons  there  is  a  marriage  of  two 
worlds,  the  antique  and  the  modern,  more  or 
less  unconscious  on  the  part  of  both.  Un- 
doubtedly such  a  union  is  an  impulse,  an  im- 
mediate irresistible  passion,  each  needs  and 
must  have  the  other  at  once. 

I.     But  we  have  to  mark  something  more 


i- 

GOETHE'S  CLASSIC  MEASURES  IN  GERMAN.      375 

than  this  merely  personal  side  in  the  poetry. 
There  gleams  out  of  the  raptured  verse  a 
deeper  suggestion,  an  universal  purport 
which  makes  it  a  significant  document  in  Goe- 
the 's  evolution;  and  it  may  be  said  to  have 
its  little  niche  in  the  World's  Literature.  The 
hexametral  measure  chanting  its  German 
words,  already  suggests  the  marriage  of  the 
classic  and  the  modern,  which  the  content  of 
the  poems  in  many  an  exquisite  image  cele- 
brates, even  if  the  moral  sense  at  times  gets 
a  shock,  as  it  does  in  Shakespeare.  They  run 
double — we  behold  Borne  and  Weimar,  Faus- 
tina and  Christiane,  the  Italian  and  the  Ger- 
man lover.  The  environment,  incidents, 
meter  are  Southern ;  the  speech,  the  soul,  the 
genius  are  Northern ;  yet  they  are  intergrown 
indissolubly — two  experiences  of  love  are 
here  indeed,  yet  fused  by  the  fire  of  art  into 
one  exalted  outpour  of  the  passion  to  which 
"my  life  and  my  poesy  have  been  dedicated. " 
We  may  think  that  Goethe  ought  to  marry 
Christiane  if  he  is  to  fulfil  his  call  of  uniting 
Classic  and  German  art  in  his  country's  lit- 
erature. He  claims  he  did.  At  any  rate  he 
has  first  to  live  what  he  writes,  he  must  en- 
act in  his  own  immediate  experience  what- 
ever of  worth  he  sets  down  in  his  verse.  .So 
we  may  construe  the  poet  in  this  enigmatic 
episode :  by  the  spontaneous  unconscious  ne- 


376          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

cessity  of  his  own  being  he  takes  to  his  bosom 
and  to  his  soul  a  naive,  unsophisticated  folk- 
girl,  who  represents  in  all  its  primal  sim- 
plicity her  people's  native  strain.  Already 
he  has  loved  an  artless  rural  maid  in  Fred- 
erika,  who  also  taps  for  him  at  Strassburg  a 
little  rill  of  the  original  Teutonic  spirit  which 
he  sets  to  song.  But  that  was  an  easy  return 
to  his  own;  he  then  had  never  been  in  Italy 
and  undergone  his  supreme  estrangement 
from  his  native  land,  to  whose  hearth  Chris- 
tiane  brings  him  back,  giving  him  home  and 
family. 

The  Roman  Elegies,  on  account  of  their 
outspoken  classic  freedoms  were  long  with- 
held from  publication,  which  the  poet's  two 
chief  friends,  Herder  and  the  Duke,  opposed, 
evidently  thinking  that  they  ought  never  to 
see  the  light.  But  Goethe  knew  well  their 
pivotal  place  not  only  in  his  own  evolution, 
but  also  in  general  literature.  At  last  in 
1795,  after,  some  six  or  seven  years'  delay, 
they  were  printed  in  Schiller's  new  period- 
ical (Die  Horen)  with  the  omission  of  a  few 
numbers.  Their  old  Eoman  prototypes  may 
be  found  in  the  Latin  "triumvirs  of  love," 
Catullus  (or  Ovid),  Tibullus,  and  especially 
Propertius,  whom  Goethe  himself  has  pointed 
out  as  an  ancient  influence.  But  in  the  deep- 
est matter  the  modern  poet  was  more  original 


GOETHE'S  CLASSIC  MEASURES  IN  GERMAN.      377 

than  his  originals,  and  of  course  his  Roman 
Elegies  have  a  significance  far  more  univer- 
sal than  those  of  the  old  Roman  poets. 

II.  In  this  revival  and  transfusion  of  clas- 
sic forms  Goethe  also  tried  his  poetic  hand  at 
the  ancient  epigram,  which  enterprise  of  his 
may  be  best  seen  in  the  group  which  he  calls 
Venetian  Epigrams,  since  the  general  setting 
of  them  is  Venice,  in  which  Italian  city  he 
stayed  some  months  in  1790.  Their  content 
as  well  as  their  length  varies  a  good  deal; 
some  of  them,  the  best  and  most  affirmative 
ones,  are  short  Elegies  and  treat  of  his  love 
for  Christiane  from  whom  he  is  now  sepa- 
rated. This  separation  makes  him  bitter,  and 
deeply  negative  toward  quite  all  that  he  sees, 
hence  the  querulous  ill-natured  tone  in  many 
of  these  epigrams ;  he  becomes  the  furious 
critic  and  tears  his  former  fair  Italy  to  very 
tatters,  as  if  she  were  not  ragged  enough  al- 
ready. Such  critical  use  of  the  epigram  he 
will  later  develop  in  his  short  arrowy  Xenia 
which,  venom-laden  he  will  shoot  against  his 
literary  foes  in  Germany.  The  most  striking 
psychical  fact  about  the  Venetian  Epigrams 
is  his  strong  reaction  against  Italy ;  he  marks 
his  surprise  at  himself  when  after  some  acrid 
outbursts  he  cries  out:  "And  this  is  the 
Italy  which  I  quit  with  so  much  pain"  only  a 
short  time  ago.  What  is  the  matter  ? 


378    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

The  magnet  which  draws  him  is  no  longer 
Southern  but  Northern,  he  does  not  look  wist- 
fully toward  Rome  but  toward  Weimar.  In 
the  Roman  Elegies  there  was  no  such  separa- 
tion, Phileros  was  in  the  immediate  enjoy- 
ment of  love's  presence;  now  he  is  tortured 
by  love's  absence.  Thus  the  Venetian  Epi- 
grams form  a  sort  of  counterpart  to  the  pre- 
ceding Elegies.  Doubtless  the  pendulum  of 
itself  had  to  swing  backward  from  the  exhil- 
iration  of  the  Italian  Journey.  Still  we  have 
here  a  test  that  the  German  folk-maiden  had 
become  intimately  ingrown  with  his  heart. 

This  antique  epigrammatic  form  will  be 
employed  a  good  deal  by  the  poet  hereafter 
for  a  variety  of  purposes.  He  transforms  it 
into  a  very  subtle  and  pliable  instrument  to 
express  his  many  varying  moods — prophetic, 
enigmatic,  satirical,  descriptive.  Already  be- 
fore he  went  to  Italy  he  had  tested  himself  in 
it,  chiefly  through  the  example  and  influence 
of  Herder  who  had  made  numerous  transla- 
tions of  Greek  epigrams.  But  the  strange 
fact  is  that  the  epigrammatic  mood  seems  not 
to  have  taken  hold  of  Goethe  during  his  Ital- 
ian rambles,  in  which  it  would  be  most  na- 
tural. For  the  epigram  meant  originally  an 
inscription,  which  would  spontaneously  bub- 
ble up  from  a  poetic  soul  at  view  of  almost 
any  passing  object — statue,  landscape,  per- 


.£• 

GOETHE'S  CLASSIC  MEASURES  IN  GERMAN.      379 

son,  event.  The  Greek  Anthology  has  pre- 
served a  few  thousands  out  of  innumerable 
examples,  indicating  how  even  the  ordinary 
Greek  consciousness  was  poetic,  and  would 
throw  out  an  iridescent  jet  of  itself  under 
small  provocation.  Doubtless  all  Hellas  and 
all  Italy  were  strown  everywhere  with  such 
epigrams — brief  pointed  inscriptions  telling 
the  essence  of  the  thing  or  of  the  occasion  at 
hand.  The  traveler  of  today  in  classic  lands, 
probing  down  into  that  wonderful  underlying 
substrate  of  poetry  in  those  old  peoples,  will 
seek  to  lift  the  buried  treasure  himself,  and 
will  become  epigrammatic  in  sympathetic  cre- 
ation, building  some  epigrams  responsively  in 
his  own  tongue  after  the  classic  model. 

Though  Goethe  did  not  epigrammatize  him- 
self during  his  classical  trip,  as  it  appears  by 
the  record,  he  developed  much  activity  in 
this  sphere  after  his  return  home,  as  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  note.  This  cluster  of  Vene- 
tion  Epigrams  is  the  first  evidence  of  his  de- 
cided epigrammatic  bent,  which  spurts  little 
classic  effusions  of  poetry  along  his  path 
pretty  much  at  random.  He  now  employs  for 
their  metrical  form  the  elegiac  hexameter, 
derived  from  Greek  antiquity  and  reproduced 
often  in  Eoman  poets.  Herein  he  classizes 
himself  again,  but  later  he  will  drop  this  clas- 
sic form  and  fall  back  upon  his  native  Teu- 


380          GOETHE'S  LIFE -POEM. —PART  SECOND. 

tonic  verse  in  his  so-called  Tame  Xenia.  But 
that  stage  lies  far  ahead  of  us;  now  he  has 
turned  elegiac  epigrammatist,  in  deep  accord 
with  his  present  stage  of  poetic  evolution. 

It  should  be  added  that  Goethe  employs  the 
Greek  mythology  in  these  hexametral  poems, 
but  after  his  own  fashion.  From  Jupiter 
down  to  the  Faun  he  sports  with  the  old  di- 
vinities, invoking  them  in  playful  prayer,  yet 
with  an  undercurrent  of  undivine  meaning. 
He  is  not  herein  seriously  mythical  but  para- 
mythical,  using  the  Gods  not  in  true  faith  but 
with  a  second  intention.  Sometimes  he  makes 
a  deity  for  his  own  convenience,  out  of  some 
thought  or  abstraction,  in  right  old-Roman 
fashion,  as  when  he  deifies  Opportunity  in 
one  of  his  Eoman  Elegies.  He  also  calls  to 
his  aid  the  lesser  Gods  of  the  ancient  Pan- 
theon, such  as  Nymphs,  Dryads,  Fauns,  and 
especially  little  blind  Amor,  the  very  deity  of 
Phileros,  the  lover  of  Love. 


IV. 

The  Classical  Reynard  the  Fox. 

The  most  daring  literary  feat  of  the  soli- 
tary Goethe  in  his  castle  of  defiance  was  to 
transform  the  Low-German  folk-poem  Rey- 
nard the  Fox,  from  its  humble  and  even 


4 

THE  CLASSICAL  REYNARD  THE  FOX.        381 

despised  doggerel  into  the  exalted,  heroic 
hexameter,  perhaps  the  most  dignified  of 
verse,  at  least  in  our  mental  association.  But 
now  comes  a  kind  of  inverted  epic  of  man 
turned  animal,  having  its  hero  Achilles  and 
even  its  king  Agamemnon  among  the  beasts 
of  forest  and  field,  who  can  tongue  the  lofty 
hexametral  roll  in  the  epical  measures  of  the 
Gods.  Thus  a  secret  world-irony  may  be 
felt  even  in  its  metrical  beat,  very  character- 
istic of  the  present  temper  of  the  world-ta- 
booed poet  himself. 

But  the  living  shape  which  will  rise  up  and 
flit  mid  all  this  classic  exuberance  is  none 
other  than  humble  Teutonic  Christiane  now 
wedded  "in  conscience "  to  Olympian  Goe- 
the, who  is  thus  enacting  in  his  life  what  he 
is  putting  into  his  poem,  which  here  cele- 
brates the  happy  union  and  marriage  of  the 
Classic  form  with  the  Teutonic  soul  in  one 
long  nuptial  narrative,  even  if  there  be  many 
satirical  flings  against  the  waspish  world. 
So  it  comes  that  Goethe  in  his  Reynard  the 
Fox  is  writing  a  phase  of  his  own  pivotal  ex- 
perience. 

This  work,  therefore,  represents  a  unique 
stage  of  his  present  solitary  Epoch  which  is 
bent  on  classizing  all  Teutonia  along  with 
himself.  So  he  -takes  the  most  native  ele- 
mental product  of  the  Teutonic  folk,  and 


382          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

whelms  it  into  his  classical  melting-pot,  bring- 
ing forth  a  distinctive  work  of  his  Genius. 
Reynard  the  Fox  originally  sprang  out  of  a 
vast  protoplasmic  reservoir  of  popular  fable 
which  showed  the  animal  world  playing  the 
part  of  men  in  the  various  relations  of  life. 
This  fable  had  especially  evolved  in  Germany 
and  belonged  peculiarly  to  her  people,  start- 
ing far  back  in  the  primeval  forest  and  un- 
folding through  the  medieval  into  the  modern 
era.  Like  every  true  Mythus  it  had  thrown 
off  many  varying  forms  and  had  shown  itself 
as  so  much  plastic  material  for  the  poets  who 
handled  it.  Moreover  it  grew  differently 
among  different  peoples  and  tribes  to  which 
it  was  transplanted,  reflecting  their  spirit 
after  its  fashion;  one  French  redaction  of  it 
is  said  to  have  reached  a  total  of  50,000  lines, 
another  30,000;  but  its  favorite  and  lasting 
home  was  doubtleas  Northern  Germany  whose 
dialect  and  consciousness  it  best  expressed. 
Such  was  the  vast  mythic  material  of  the 
people  which  Goethe  tapped  by  his  Reynard 
the  Fox,  giving  to  it  a  new  speech  and  a  new 
form,  and  transfiguring  it  into  a  permanent 
work  of  literature.  Doubtless  the  story  was 
known  to  his  boyhood,  since  Frankfort  had 
been  a  chief  center  of  its  early  publication 
and  distribution,  and  his  myth-loving  mother 
must  have  kept  it  in  her  big  reservoir  of  ever- 


. 
THE  CLASSICAL  REYNARD  THE  FOX.        383 

flowing  storydom.  But  it  lay  dormant  till  he 
was  ready.  He  says  that  the  horrors  of  the 
French  Revolution,  in  which  men  had  re- 
lapsed into  beasts,  provoked  him  to  take  up 
Eeynard  which  came  into  his  hands  ' '  through 
a  special  providence, ' 9  being  just  the  utter- 
ance of  the  time  and  of  himself.  "  I  took  it 
with  me  to  the  blockade  of  Mainz,  and  found 
consolation  and  joy  in  my  labor  devoted  to 
this  unholy  world-bible. ' '  He  began  the  work 
early  in  1793,  and  ended  it  in  May  of  the  same 
year,  though  he  doctored  this  first  sponta- 
neous outburst  a  good  deal  before  it  was  pub- 
lished. 

But  the  chief  interest  for  us  is  that  he 
turned  this  Teutonic  folk-poem  with  its  orig- 
inal Low-German  doggerel  into  lofty  classic 
hexameters,  using  as  a  medium  Gottsched's 
High-German  prose  translation  (1752).  What 
does  such  a  fact  mean?  That  he  could  han- 
dle the  doggerel  with  supreme  success  he  had 
already  shown  in  his  Faust,  which  is  written 
in  that  measure.  Indeed  the  doggerel,  short 
rhymed  Iambic  lines  of  four  feet  mainly,  is 
the  most  natural,  easy,  and  popular  measure 
in  all  Teutonic  literature,  and  is  found  in  a 
larger  body  of  poetry  than  any  other  metrical 
form.  In  medieval  German  verse  down  to 
Hans  Sachs  it  prevails,  and  reaches  its  last 
supremacy  in  Goethe's  greatest  poetical 


384          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

achievement — Faust.  In  English  also  the  dog- 
gerel has  been  much  employed;  we  find  it  in 
the  old  metrical  romances;  early  Chaucer 
uses  it  as  well  as  recent  Sir  Walter  Scott; 
the  best  specimen  in  our  American  poetry  is 
Whittier's  Snow-bound.  We  may  deem  it  the 
native  measure  of  Teutonic  people,  the  most 
nearly  universal  among  them,  even  if  it  has 
a  certain  taint  in  its  very  name. 

Now  Goethe  in  his  present  classical  bent 
is  going  to  classicize  this  original  Teutonic 
folk-poem,  changing  its  inborn  metrical  vest- 
ure into  an  imported  hexametral  garb.  It  is 
again  that  marriage  which  he  is  celebrating 
both  in  his  life  and  in  his  works  between  the 
Antique  and  the  German.  It  was  an  auda- 
cious enterprise.  Has  he  succeeded?  We 
think  he  has,  though  not  a  few  have  said  and 
still  say  that  there  is  no  true  reconciliation 
between  the  form  and  content  of  his  poetic 
performance.  But  Goethe's  Reynard  the 
Fox  is  read  today  as  a  product  of  universal 
literature,  having  been  transmuted  by  the 
poet's  genius  from  its  quite  formless  myth- 
ical protoplasm  into  a  work  of  art.  Undoubt- 
edly both  the  native  fable  and  the  foreign 
hexameter  are  changed  in  spirit  a  good  deal ; 
still  they  are  wedded  and  are  happy  together. 
Much  fault  has  been  found  with  the  hexam- 
eters by  formal  metrists  like  Voss ;  but  they 


THE  CLASSICAL  REYNARD  THE  FOX.        385 

live  and  march  gaily  to  their  new  tune.  Un- 
doubtedly they  are  not  Homeric  or  Vergilian, 
and  are  not  intended  to  be. 

The  new  fresh  atmosphere  which  is  suf- 
fused through  the  whole  poem  is  its  peculiar 
humor,  quite  different  from  that  of  the  Low- 
German  original,  which  was  naive  and  hearty, 
but  coarse  and  often  cruel— the  animals  were 
too  much  animalized  for  human  enjoyment. 
Goethe  has  refined  all  this  without  losing  the 
flavor ;  he  has  humanized  the  crude  bestiality 
and  given  it  a  courtly  polish.  But  the  chief 
ingredient  which  he  has  added  is  wholly  novel, 
as  it  belongs  neither  to  the  original  poem  nor 
to  the  verse  in  itself.  This  peculiar  quality 
is  the  humerous  sensation  which  arises  when 
the  animal  population  here  is  heard  speak- 
ing in  lofty  heroic  hexameters,  and  celebrat- 
ing their  petty  bestial  exploits.  The  roll  of 
the  verse  has  of  itself  a  dash  of  humor  which 
the  old  doggerel  could  not  possess.  The  an- 
tique measure  applied  to  such  a  theme  turns 
mock-heroic  in  its  very  sound;  many  a  verse 
has  its  own  fun  just  in  the  intonation;  the 
happy  incongruity  between  word  and  thing 
keeps  the  smiles  rippling.  The  old  Greek  also 
had  his  mock-heroic  literature,  in  which  the 
heroic  Homeric  hexameter  was  decidedly  un- 
heroized,  witness  the  old  skit  called  The  Bat- 
tle of  the  Frogs  and  Mice,  which  also  human- 


386          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

izes  the  petty  animals.  But  that  was  hardly 
more  than  a  travesty  of  the  one  poetic  world- 
view,  the  ancient  Homeric;  while  Goethe's 
poem  conjoins  two  cultures,  putting  the  one 
into  the  other's  vesture,  in  a  mood  of  per- 
vasive ironical  humor.  It  may  be  added  that 
Don  Quixote  produces  a  somewhat  similar 
impression  of  heroic  mockery.  So  we  have 
to  think  that  Goethe  lived  this  mock-heroic 
measure,  and  felt  it  as  he  wrote  it  singing 
from  his  deed. 

Thus  we  stress  metrical  form  not  only  in 
Goethe's  verse  but  also  in  his  life,  so  deeply 
intergrown  were  they  in  his  Genius.  For  va- 
riety of  metrical  power  he  probably  stands 
unique  among  all  the  poets  of  the  world. 
Every  reader  who  seeks  in  some  degree  to 
catch  the  total  sweep  of  his  literary  person- 
ality, will  be  drawn  to  grapple  with  the  prob- 
lem of  his  varying  meters,  which  are  so  man- 
ifold and  so  subtly  adapted  to  their  themes. 
His  greatest  poem,  Faust,  contains  many, 
though  by  no  means  all,  of  his  measures.  One 
of  the  puzzles  of  that  work  to  the  inquisitive 
student  is  the  frequent  shifting  of  metrical 
schemes.  Why  such  a  diversified  interplay 
of  rhymes,  feet  and  lines  in  the  Easter  scene 
(Faust,  Part  I)  f  And  the  question  we  ask 
here  concerning  one  little  scene  of  one  of  his 
poems,  we  may  well  ask  in  regard  to  the 


.*• 

THE  CLASSICAL  REYNARD  THE  FOX.        387 

whole  multiform  output  of  his  poetical 
life. 

In  general  we  can  divide  the  measures  of 
Goethe  into  two  great  divisions,  ancient  and 
modern.  His  greatest  works,  both  dramatic 
and  lyric,  move  in  modern  or  Teutonic 
rhythms,  as  his  most  natural  spontaneous  ut- 
terance. Still  there  is  a  body  of  excellent  po- 
etry which  follows  the  ancient  or  Greek  ca- 
dence. Indeed  it  may  be  said  that  Goethe  was 
altogether  the  greatest  master  of  Greek 
meters  in  a  modern  tongue  that  Europe  has 
produced.  He  heard  the  voice  of  the  old  Par- 
nassian Muse  and  made  it  sing  in  German. 

These  ancient  Greek  measures  he  started 
to  use  already  at  Frankfort,  and  continued  to 
employ  them  at  Weimar.  In  this  earlier  ten- 
dency Pindar  seems  largely  his  inspiration. 
The  free  flight  of  irregular  and  rhymeless 
lines  unhampered  by  exact  measurement  of 
foot  and  verse  was  congenial  to  his  bound- 
bursting  tendency  at  that  time.  His  measure 
has  in  its  form  a  Titanic  reflection,  like  the 
choruses  of  Aeschylus.  At  the  present  time 
(1915)  there  is  a  tendency  especially  in  the 
younger  poets  to  return  to  these  free  rhyme- 
less  rhythms,  which  Goethe  employed  in  one 
of  the  stages  of  his  poetic  evolution. 

Hintful  is  the  fact  that  during  his  Weimar 
Epoch  we  find  him  passing  from  his  unmeas- 


388    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

ured  to  his  measured  schemes  of  verse.  The 
hexameter  starts  to  appear  rather  tentatively 
in  brief  scattered  examples  chiefly  in  its 
elegiac  form.  He  had  begun  to  look  into 
the  Greek  Anthology,  still  not  fully  appreci- 
ated today  as  the  vast  depository  of  elemen- 
tal poetry  of  the  Hellenic  race.  Hence  he 
commences  to  throw  down  some  Epigrams  in 
the  old  classic  sense,  that  is,  inscriptions  on 
persons,  actions,  events,  giving  in  a  few  lines 
their  ideal  poetic  essence. 

Goethe's  contribution  in  the  matter  of  clas- 
sic form  has  come  to  stay,  though  its  valid- 
ity in  modern  literature  has  often  been  ques- 
tioned. According  to  our  judgment  he  is  in 
this  field  a  forerunner  whose  work  is  still  to 
be  fully  appropriated  and  unfolded  in  the  fu- 
ture. Hence  we  have  sought  to  set  forth  its 
significant  place  in  his  total  achievement. 
But  during  the  present  Epoch  he  wrote  much 
in  prose  which  drops  below  the  level  of  his 
genius  and  which  we  shall  have  to  leave  un- 
mentioned.  Narratives,  novelettes,  even  dra- 
mas satirizing  the  French  Revolution,  make 
the  sandy  tract  of  his  Genius  which  we  hurry 
through  with  a  swift  side-glance  just  to 
glimpse  the  Sahara  of  his  life-poem.  Still 
these  products  have  their  significance  as 
showing  the  sunken  Goethe  during  his  soli- 
tary Epoch,  unlaureled  of  Fame  and  for- 


.i- 

THE  CLASSICAL  REYNARD  THE  FOX.       389 

saken  by  his  Muse.  Is  his  Genius  departed 
forever?  He  thought  so  himself  at  times, 
and  said  so.  But  in  this  condition  his  deeply 
estranged,  if  not  yet  quite  lost  soul  is  met 
by  Frederick  Schiller,  like  that  other  poet 
who  comes  to  Dante  " astray  in  a  dark  wood" 
and  is  to  lead  him  through  and  out  of  his  In- 
ferno. The  isolated  Genius  is  now  associ- 
ated by  a  kindred  sympathetic  Genius,  asso- 
ciated creatively,  whereby  each  is  brought  to 
the  full  flowering  of  his  highest  creativity. 
Thus  we  come  to  a  new  Epoch  which  unfolds 
the  supreme  inflorescence  of  Goethe's  life- 
poem. 


390          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 


CHAPTER  FIFTH. 

GOETHE'S  ASSOCIATION  WITH  SCHILLER. 

From  the  solitary  Goethe  we  now  pass  to 
the  associated  Goethe — a  transition  which, 
though  long  prepared,  took  place  with  some 
degree  of  rapidity.  We  have  just  seen  how 
the  poet,  after  his  return  from  Italy  became 
spiritually  isolated  without  and  within,  alien- 
ated from  his  environing  world  and  from 
himself.  The  result  was  he  had  about  re- 
solved to  give  up  poetry,  and  thus  to  re- 
nounce his  very  Genius,  as  he  says.  He,  now 
at  the  ripest  middle-age,  the  most  creative 
time  of  life,  had  come  to  feel  old  and  outworn, 
quite  transcended  by  other  younger  talents. 
Thus  he  was  in  the  act  of  laying  himself  upon 
the  shelf  when  he  met  Schiller,  not  for  the 
first  time,  but  at  the  pivotal  moment  for  both. 
Then  followed  his  new  youth,  his  "second 
puberty "  he  names  it,  which  he  believed  to 
be  a  distinguishing  mark  of  great  men 
generally,  and  which  recurred  in  his  own  ca- 
reer not  merely  once  but  several  times,  as  we 
shall  hereafter  see.  He  possessed  the  power 
of  being  re-born,  yea  of  re-bearing  himself 


GOETHE'S  ASSOCIATION  WITH  SCHILLER.        391 

spiritually  into  a  fresh  creative  juvenescence 
after  a  time  of  lapsed  energy  and  senility. 
Thus  he  passed  through  old-age  several  times, 
and  also  through  youth  quite  as  often. 

It  was  indeed  an  Epoch-making  transition. 
Schiller  observes  the  fact  in  a  letter  to  his 
friend  (1797) :  "You  are  now  going  back  to 
your  youth,  fully  developed  and  mature,  and 
you  will  unite  the  fruit  with  the  flower. " 
Then  he  idealizes  the  occurrence  as  was  his 
wont:  "This  second  youth  is  the  youth  of 
the  Gods,  and  immortal  as  theirs. "  A  year 
later  Goethe  writes  to  Schiller  in  their  Cor- 
respondence: "You  have  brought  me  a  sec- 
ond youth,  and  made  me  a  poet  again,  which 
I  had  quite  ceased  to  be."  Certainly  a  grand 
reconciliation  with  his  own  true  destiny, 
from  which  he  had  been  estranged — how  did 
Schiller  bring  it  about?  Through  his  unique 
friendship  which  meant  something  far  more 
than  the  relation  of  individual  to  individual, 
since  Schiller  restored  Goethe's  lost  Genius 
to  its  right  vocation,  stimulated  it  to  renewed 
activity,  and  associated  the  lonely  poet  afresh 
with  himself  and  his  world.  This  rescue  Goe- 
the was  in  the  habit  of  acknowledging  till  his 
last  day,  as  in  his  confession  to  Councillor 
Schultz:  "I  really  do  not  know  what  would 
have  become  of  me  without  Schiller's  incite- 
ment." Then  he  goes  on  to  say  that  this  sec- 


392    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

ond  renascence  of  his  Genius  would  not  have 
been  unless  the  right  mediator  had  appeared 
at  the  right  instant. 

I.  Goethe  in  his  later  years  was  fond  of 
recalling  his  time  with  Schiller,  as  we  see  by 
his  many  allusions  in  his  talks  with  Ecker- 
mann  and  others.  He  designates  it  as  "an 
Epoch  which  will  not  return  and  still  is  work- 
ing at  the  present  day,  exerting  a  vital  and 
powerful  influence  not  on  Germany  alone. " 
Observe  that  Goethe  in  this  as  well  as  in 
other  passages  calls  his  friendship  with 
Schiller  an  Epoch,  in  which  designation  we 
shall  follow  him,  as  most  writers  on  both  po- 
ets have  done.  The  Goethe-Schiller  alliance 
is  something  distinctive,  not  only  in  the  poet's 
life,  but  in  literature.  We  may  add  for  the 
purpose  of  avoiding  confusion,  that  it  does 
not  embrace  a  Period  which  Goethe  calls  a 
leading  Epoch  (Hauptepoche).  For  instance 
the  Journey  to  Italy  opened  a  Period  in  the 
total  sweep  of  Goethe's  career;  and  during 
the  present  Epoch  Goethe  still  maintained 
the  classical  bent  which  he  received  from 
Italy.  Hence  the  Goethe-Schiller  time  is 
properly  to  be  regarded  as  an  Epoch  of  the 
poet's  second  or  classical  Period,  of  which  it 
undoubtedly  is  the  longest  and  most  prolific 
part. 

Such,  then,  is  the  Epoch  now  under  consid- 


GOETHE'S  ASSOCIATION  WITH  SCHILLER.        393 

eration.  It  lasted  about  ten  years,  or  per- 
chance a  little  more,  from  Goethe 's  first  piv- 
otal interview  with  Schiller  in  late  May,  1794, 
till  Schiller's  decease,  after  some  months  of 
serious  illness  on  May  9,^  1805.  Perhaps  the 
best  way  to  date  their  mutual  activity  is  to 
start  with  the  first  letter  of  Schiller  in  the 
Goethe-Schiller  Correspondence,  June  13, 
1794,  and  compare  it  with  his  last  letter,  writ- 
ten on  his  death-bed  at  the  end  of  April,  1805. 
This  indicates  some  ten  full  years  of  contin- 
uously active  intercourse  between  the  two 
poets,  and  so  the  whole  time  may  be  distinct- 
ively entitled  the  Goethe-Schiller  Decennium. 
It  should  also  be  noted  that  this  Epoch  is 
the  middle  one  of  Goethe's  total  life,  being 
the  fifth  Epoch  out  of  the  nine  into  which  the 
complete  round  of  his  creative  activity  falls. 
Thus  it  is  the  culmination  of  the  poet's  tem- 
poral existence,  lasting  from  his  forty-fifth 
till  his  fifty-fifth  year — on  the  whole  the  choic- 
est of  man's  allotted  days  for  best  productive 
authorship.  There  can  be  no  question  that 
Goethe  brought  forth  his  greatest  and  most 
lasting  works  during  this  Epoch,  beginning 
with  Wilhelm  Meister's  Apprenticeship  and 
ending  with  The  First  Part  of  Faust.  Un- 
doubtedly he  had  already  written  famous 
things,  and  hereafter  his  cunning  will  not  fail 
him  even  in  his  old  age;  still  the  present 


394    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

Decennium  is  the  cap-stone  of  his  life's  great 
arch  of  more  than  eight  decades. 

Thus  it  comes  that  Goethe's  life  gives  a 
sense  of  fullness  and  of  completeness  surpass- 
ing that  of  any  other  recorded  individual, 
with  its  total  human  gamut  of  good  and  bad, 
of  fulfilment  and  failure,  of  the  positive  and 
the  negative  man.  Far  narrower  and  more 
incomplete,  even  if  more  ideal  and  exemplary 
was  the  poet  Schiller's  career.  In  the  first 
place  he  was  cut  off  at  the  age  of  forty-five 
while  in  the  full  process  of  development ;  com- 
pared to  Goethe  he  had  hardly  finished  one 
Period  of  his  earthly  activity,  though  he  had 
passed  through  several  stages  or  Epochs, 
concluding  with  the  most  brilliant  and  the 
the  most  creative  one  in  conjunction  with 
Goethe.  In  the  next  place  he  was  limited  on 
many  sides  by  persistent  ill-health,  by  lack  of 
education  and  of  travel,  by  downright  pov- 
erty. Thus  he  was  straitened  to  the  life 
particular  while  Goethe  kept  expanding  to- 
ward the  life  universal. 

II.  The  growth  of  the  friendship  of  the 
two  poets  has  its  history  and  passed  through 
a  stage  of  mutual  repugnance  if  not  of  down- 
right hate.  Schiller  speaking  of  him  in  a  let- 
ter declares:  "This  man,  this  Goethe  just 
stands  in  my  way.  He  reminds  me  so  often 
that  Fate  has  treated  me  harshly.  How  eas- 


i- 
GOETHE' 8  ASSOCIATION  WITH  SCHILLER.        395 

ily  was  his  Genius  borne  forward  by  his  lot, 
and  how  have  I  had  to  struggle  up  to  this 
minute!"  Thus  Schiller  cannot  forbear  a 
touch  of  jealousy  when  he  compares  their 
conditions.  More  poignant  is  this  sentence : 
"He  has  awakened  in  me  a  strange  mixture 
of  love  and  hate,  a  feeling  not  dissimilar  to 
that  which  Brutus  and  Cassius  must  have 
borne  toward  Caesar."  Here  Schiller  con- 
fesses that  it  is  Goethe's  towering  greatness, 
as  in  the  case  of  Caesar,  which  makes  him  feel 
little  and  envious.  So  true  is  it  that  whom- 
soever or  whatsoever  the  World-Spirit  in- 
dwells, be  it  individual  or  nation,  is  certain 
to  be  hated  by  those  who  know  themselves 
beneath  such  transcendent  power.  Hence  he 
acknowledges  his  inferiority:  "With  Goe- 
the I  dare  not  measure  myself  when  he  puts 
forth  his  whole  strength.  He  has  far  more 
Genius  than  I  have,  and  then  too  a  far  greater 
wealth  of  knowledge,  a  more  certain  sensu- 
ous grip,  and  an  artistic  insight  clarified  and 
refined  by  information  of  every  kind. ' '  Still 
Schiller's  deepest  longing  is  to  come  into 
communion  with  the  Great  Man  somehow, 
and  really  to  get  hold  of  him.  * '  Goethe  is  sel- 
dom alone,"  he  complains,  "and  I  would  like, 
not  merely  to  behold  him  at  a  distance,  but 
to  snatch  out  of  him  something  for  myself." 
Such  was  the  situation  for  several  vears 


396    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

before  1794,  during  which  Schiller  was  often 
in  Weimar  and  its  neighborhood,  and  saw 
Goethe  in  society  and  even  spoke  with  him, 
but  always  "at  a  distance."  Moreover  they 
had  mutual  friends  who  sought  to  bring  them 
together,  but  with  no  result.  Schiller  was 
even  appointed  professor  at  the  University 
of  Jena  through  Goethe's  recommendation, 
but  the  interval  of  icy  politeness  remained 
impassable.  Schiller  again  hits  the  nail  on 
the  head  in  a  letter :  i  l  Goethe  makes  his  ex- 
istence beneficent,  but  only  as  a  God,  without 
giving  himself."  A  very  striking  designa- 
tion of  the  Olympian  Goethe:  divine  indeed, 
as  is  Zeus,  but  he  will  not  give  himself — 
movens  non  motus — like  the  Greek  God,  stat- 
uesque in  his  loftiness,  but  cold  as  the  mar- 
ble. Such  is  truly  the  solitary  Goethe,  whose 
very  soul  has  been  sculptured  in  his  classic 
workshop,  but  he  has  begun  to  feel  the  limit 
of  such  training,  the  drawback  of  such  isola- 
tion. Moreover  the  man  has  appeared,  is  in- 
deed just  here,  who  is  battering  away  at  his 
self-walled  fortress,  and  will  soon  break  it 
down,  letting  the  prisoner  out  into  the  world 
and  into  his  true  self. 

Still  not  yet  could  be  the  consummation. 
Schiller  had  written  offensive  words  in  pub- 
lic print  which  were  secretly  aimed  at  Goe- 
the who  was  well  aware  of  the  fact.  The 


GOETHE'S  ASSOCIATION  WITH  SCHILLER.        397 

writer  had  disparaged  his  Genius  "as  a  mere 
product  of  Nature "  which  he  could  not  help 
if  he  would.  Goethe  was  too  Godlike  for  re- 
venge, yet  too  Godlike  to  condescend  to  for- 
give. Long  afterwards  in  a  retrospect  he 
hints  the  wound:  "No  companionship  could 
be  thought  of;  all  intercession  of  friends 
proved  fruitless ;  my  reasons  could  not  be  re- 
futed. We  were  antipodal,  the  Earth's  diam- 
eter lay  between  us,  thus  we  were  completely 
polarized,  and  could  not  be  drawn  together. ' ' 
Still  as  poles  they  are  on  the  way  to  find 
themselves  necessarily  interrelated  and  in- 
separably conjoined  together.  Schiller  also 
will  cry  out  in  despair:  "Goethe  never  over- 
flows toward  any  human  being,  he  always 
keeps  himself  in  reserve ;  you  cannot  get  hold 
of  him  anywhere,  I  believe  him  to  be  a  con- 
summate Egoist. "  So  the  see-saw  kept  up 
for  several  years  between  the  two  poets,  each 
needing  the  other,  each  far  down  in  his  heart 
longing  for  the  other.  Schiller  in  his  better 
moments  forefelt  the  coming  bond,  which 
would  be  all  the  stronger  for  its  long  and 
tense  trial,  and  he  could  prophetically  hint, 
"if  one  tries  his  best,  he  cannot  remain  un- 
recognized by  the  other  forever." 

III.  At  last  the  psychological  moment  ar- 
rived, and  the  two  souls  feeling  their  diver- 
sity but  also  their  deep  unity,  began  slowly  to 


398          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

clasp  and  to  become  ingrown  not  only  for  life 
but  for  all  time.  Goethe,  looking  back  at  this 
determining  node  of  his  career  in  later  life, 
has  told  of  it  with  some  degree  of  fullness. 
Both  were  at  a  lecture  in  Jena  on  Natural 
Science,  and  happened  to  go  out  the  door  to- 
gether, when  they  began  conversing  on  what 
they  had  just  heard.  Both  agreed  that  the 
treatment  of  the  subject  was  faulty  on  ac- 
count of  its  piecemeal  method  of  exposition. 
Whereat  Goethe  took  fire  and  declared  that 
there  was  another  way  of  unfolding  Nature 
different  from  this  separated,  analytic  man- 
ner. They  reached  Schiller's  house,  Goethe 
stepped  over  the  sill — a  big  step  for  him  to 
take.  Thus  he  narrates:  "the  conversation 
enticed  me  inside  where  I  set  forth  my  meta- 
morphosis of  plants  with  energy,  and  by 
means  of  strokes  of  the  pen  I  caused  a  sym- 
bolic plant  to  grow  up  before  his  eyes.  Schiller 
understood  the  matter  well,  but  shook  his 
head  saying:  'That  is  no  experience;  that  is 
an  idea.'  I  was  taken  aback,  somewhat 
vexed;  the  old  point  of  difference  had  ap- 
peared, and  with  it  a  streak  of  the  old  dis- 
like ;  but  I  drew  myself  together  and  replied : 
'That  is  a  new  delight  for  me  that  I  have 
ideas  without  knowing  it,  and  even  see  them 
with  my  own  eyes.'  Then  arose  a  lively  dis- 
cussion between  me,  the  obstinate  realist,  and 


i- 

GOETHE'S  ASSOCIATION  WITH  SCHILLER.        399 

Schiller,  the  trained  Kantian,  but  neither  side 
would  give  up."  So  Goethe  reports,  but  in 
the  deeper  sense  he  had  given  up.  Hence  he 
adds  that  "the  first  step  had  been  taken,"  es- 
pecially by  him,  for  Schiller  did  not  need  to 
take  it.  Goethe  felt  that  he  had  now  met  the 
man  who  dared  meet  him  face  to  face,  who 
could  break  down  his  isolation  and  mediate 
him  afresh  with  his  own  true  selfhood,  with 
his  very  Genius.  Accordingly  he  here  con- 
fesses that  "Schiller's  power  of  attraction 
was  great,  he  bound  fast  to  himself  all  who 
might  approach  him" — and  that  was  what 
now  happened;  "I  took  part  in  his  plans,  I 
promised  to  contribute  to  his  periodical  (Die 
Hor en) ;  and  his  wife  whom  I  had  known  and 
was  fond  of  from  childhood,  helped  to  cement 
the  bond  which  became  lasting." 

Still  the  difference  remained  and  persisted 
through  all  their  long  and  intense  friendship : 
Schiller  the  idealist,  Goethe  the  realist;  the 
one  essentially  subjective,  the  other  essen- 
tially objective ;  the  former  more  the  woman, 
who  loves  the  man,  the  latter  more  the  man 
who  loves  the  woman,  even  if  both  of  them 
were  masculine.  But  that  "symbolic  plant" 
(so  called  here  by  Goethe)  was  verily  char- 
acteristic. Schiller  sees  it  not  with  the  outer 
eyesight,  but  with  the  inner  vision  as  idea, 
hence  his  idealism ;  Goethe  sees  it,  or  claims 


400    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

to  see  it,  with  his  own  eyes,  visible  there  be- 
fore him,  hence  his  obstinate  realism.  That 
is,  he  visions  immediately  the  plant  as  uni- 
versal, from  which  all  particular  plants  are 
generated,  and  he  can  actually  draw  the  same 
with  his  pen.  Such  is  indeed  his  poetic  act: 
his  symbolic  or  universal  plant  he  beholds  or 
re-creates  as  particular ;  he  cannot  grasp  it  as 
thought  or  idea,  he  must  make  it  a  real  indi- 
vidual. Thus  we  also  catch  a  glimpse  of  his 
limit:  he  is  the  born  poet  who  has  to  learn 
philosophy  if  he  gets  it;  while  Schiller  is 
rather  the  born  philosopher  who  has  to  learn 
poetry,  and  this  is  just  what  he  will  do  with 
a  marvelous  result. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  through  this  conver- 
sation Goethe  has  come  to  feel  the  limitation 
of  his  purely  poetic  consciousness  which  he 
must  transcend  if  he  would  rise  to  be  in  him- 
self the  universal  man  and  therewith  the  poet 
of  all  culture.  Hence  he  at  once  begins  with 
Schiller  a  profound  abstract  study  of  his  art 
and  of  the  fine  arts  generally;  his  persistent 
probing  and  searching  into  the  philosophy  of 
Aesthetics  we  can  trace  in  their  Correspond- 
ence which  now  rays  forth  in  eager  and  ear- 
nest amplitude.  Undoubtedly  Goethe  had 
deeply  contemplated  poetry  and  art  before 
this  time,  especially  in  Italy;  but  now  he 
philosophizes  his  work  and  even  his  Genius, 


GOETHE'S  ASSOCIATION  WITH  SCHILLER.        401 

seeking  to  get  consciously  to  the  bottom  of  his 
own  procedure  with  the  very  suggestive  help 
of  his  friend.  Indeed  that  is  largely  what 
Schiller  has  at  present  to  do :  show  Goethe  to 
himself,  tell  him  what  he  is,  for  he  hardly 
knows  himself.  He  must  rise  from  the  poet 
more  or  less  unconscious  to  the  conscious  poet. 
To  be  sure  Goethe  will  often  take  a  growl  at 
this  labor,  which  is  not  native  to  him,  though 
he  has  to  do  it ;  he  will  complain  that  he  has 
"no  philosophical  organ, "  and  indeed  philos- 
ophy is  not  organic  with  him ;  he  will  make 
mouths  at  "empty  speculation, "  but  he  has 
to  swallow  the  pill  if  he  is  going  to  get  well 
and  be  the  whole  man.  So  he  will  speculate 
with  Schiller,  often  very  profoundly  and  to 
our  mind  poetically,  for  not  a  few  of  his  let- 
ters are  poems,  having  the  Goethean  poetic 
vision  and  aroma. 

Then  we  are  not  to  forget  that  just  the 
present  Goethe-Schiller  Epoch  was  pecu- 
liarly an  era  of  philosophy,  for  this  was  the 
time's  very  discipline  in  matters  spiritual, 
and  the  center  of  it  was  the  University  of 
Jena  which  was  under  Goethe's  personal  ad- 
ministration. Fichte,  Schelling  and  Hegel 
had  all  been  there  as  professors ;  the  brothers 
Schlegel  and  other  leaders  of  the  Eomantic 
movement  gathered  about  Jena  as  their  chief 
point  of  radiation;  Natural  Science,  Goethe's 


402          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

own  darling,  had  there  creative  workers.  But 
the  grand  sunburst  of  that  University  was 
philosophical,  the  counterpart  in  the  inner 
world  of  what  the  French  Eevolution,  going 
on  at  the  same  time,  was  in  the  outer  world. 
Now  Goethe,  the  child  of  his  age,  had  to  know 
something  of  its  chief  discipline,  if  he  would 
live  spiritually  in  his  own  time ;  still  further 
he  had  to  philosophize  himself  and  his  self's 
very  art,  if  he  would  swim  abreast  of  his  cen- 
tury. All  this  he  must  have  felt,  and  must 
have  been  waiting  for  the  moment  and  the 
man  to  mediate  him  with  his  present  deepest 
need;  behold,  he  comes,  here  they  are,  both 
of  them,  and  the  poet  embraces  at  once  "his 
dear  Goddess  Opportunity,"  at  first  with  a 
smart  scowl  at  his  necessary  medicine. 

IV.  Thus  the  bond  of  association  was 
formed,  and  Schiller  was  ready  to  say  after- 
ward that  it  could  not  have  taken  place  profit- 
ably at  an  earlier  time — fortune  had  thwarted 
his  efforts  till  the  right  conjunction  of  the 
stars.  Goethe  in  talking  with  Eckermann 
(March  24,  1829)  has  stated  his  view  of  the 
tie  with  Schiller  in  his  peculiar  terms :  ' '  The 
higher  a  man  stands,  the  more  he  is  under  the 
influence  of  the  demons,  and  he  must  be  al- 
ways on  the  look-out"  that  he  hit  the  favor- 
able moment.  For  instance  "there  was 
something  demonic  in  my  getting  acquainted 


GOETHE'S  ASSOCIATION  WITH  SCHILLER.        403 

with  Schiller.  We  might  have  met  earlier  or 
later,  but  the  all-important  fact  is  that  we 
were  brought  together  just  at  the  Epoch 
when  I  had  the  Italian  Journey  behind  me 
and  Schiller  was  getting  tired  of  his  philo- 
sophical speculations. "  So  Goethe  again 
marks  off  his  Epoch  with  Schiller  as  well  as 
the  Epoch  which  went  before  it.  Elsewhere 
such  a  meeting  was  called  "a  divine  coinci- 
dence, "  perchance  like  the  intervention  of 
one  of  Homer's  Gods  coming  down  from 
above.  Supernally  ordered  by  a  demonic 
power  it  was,  else  it  could  not  have  been 
Epoch-making;  so  the  poet  poetizes  the  grand 
node  of  his  career. 

Now  what  is  the  point  at  which  their  unity 
begins  and  from  which  it  unfolds!  Strangely 
it  was  philosophy  or  the  much-decried  spec- 
ulation; Goethe  needed  more  abstraction 
which  Schiller  could  give,  and  Schiller  needed 
a  good  dose  of  sensuous  concreteness  which 
Goethe  could  administer.  Says  Schiller: 
"We  first  found  ourselves  in  unexpected 
agreement  on  the  theory  of  art,  which  was  the 
more  interesting  as  it  proceeded  from  oppo- 
site viewpoints. "  Thus  they  discovered  their 
theoretical  harmony  to  start  with.  Goethe 
likewise  writes  to  his  friend:  "You  know, 
my  dear  sir,  that  after  our  fortnight's  con- 
ference we  were  united  in  principles,"  from 


404          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

which  began  to  flow  other  co-incidences  and 
concordances.  In  a  letter,  Schiller  very 
'frankly  gives  to  his  great  pupil  a  pivotal  les- 
son in  psychology:  "You  have  one  labor 
more:  as  you  have  already  passed  from  in- 
tuition (sensuous)  to  abstraction,  so  you 
must  now  reverse  the  process  and  turn  your 
abstract  concepts  back  into  intuitions,  and 
your  thoughts  into  feelings,  for  only  by  means 
of  these  can  your  poetic  genius  be  product- 
ive/' Thus  through  Schiller  and  his  philos- 
ophy Goethe  is  to  rise  from  the  unconscious 
to  the  conscious  artist,  of  course  without 
jeopardizing  his  masterful  spontaneity.  But 
how  about  Goethe 's  classical  bent  in  a  North- 
ern world?  What  is  to  be  done  with  such  a 
double-natured  poet?  Hereupon  also  Schil- 
ler imparts  his  word  of  instruction  which  has 
its  significance  for  the  future:  "As  you  are 
a  born  German  and  as  your  Greek  spirit  was 
cast  into  this  Northern  world,  there  remains 
no  other  choice  for  you  than  either  to  become 
wholly  a  Northern  artist  or  to  supplement 
your  imagination  with  that  which  is  lacking 
to  it  by  the  power  of  thought,  and  to  repro- 
duce a  Hellas  as  it  were  from  within  out- 
wards by  way  of  reflection. "  Schiller  fore- 
sees Goethe's  tendency  "to  reproduce  a  Hel- 
las in  Germany,"  which  is  the  result  of  the 
Italian  experience,  and  intimates  that  it  must 


GOETHE'S  ASSOCIATION  WITH  SCHILLER.        405 

be  done  "by  the  power  of  thought M  rather 
than  by  the  simple  spontaneous  outburst  of 
his  native  talent,  such  as  was  the  case  with 
his  earlier  productions  of  the  Frankfort  Ep- 
och. -That  first  immediacy  of  his  poetry  has 
passed  away,  and  his  divine  gift  must  now  be 
restored  and  supported  by  a  conscious  knowl- 
edge of  his  art. 

V.  In  this  statement  is  indicated  that 
double  strand  in  Goethe  which  will  run 
through  the  entire  present  Epoch,  namely  his 
Classic  and  his  Northern  creations,  or  his 
Greek  and  his  German  tendencies.  Upon 
these  two  lines  quite  parallel  his  poetic  ac- 
tivity will  unfold,  and  throw  off  splendid  ex- 
amples of  each  kind.  And  not  only  he  will 
proceed  thus,  he  will  impart  the  same  double- 
ness  to  Schiller  who  will  also  write  in  classic 
forms  though  he  never  had  the  Italian  bap- 
tism. He  too  will  seek  "to  reproduce  Hellas 
in  Germany, "  having  caught  the  poetic  thrill 
of  it  from  his  friend.  He  will  build  the  lofty 
hexameter,  especially  in  its  elegiac  form,  and 
will  revel  in  epigrams  and  elegies,  flinging 
them  off  after  the  example  of  Goethe  in  cre- 
ative rivalry.  But  Schiller's  Northern 
achievement  is  far  greater  than  his  Classic; 
especially  his  ballads  are  today  the  most  pop- 
ular work  of  the  German  Muse,  and  thus 
would  seem  to  be  the  most  native  expression 


406          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

of  the  Teutonic  folk-soul.  In  this  field  again 
he  is  paralleled  by  Goethe,  whose  ballads 
spring  from  the  deepest  sources  of  literature, 
but  are  said  hot  to  equal  those  of  Schiller  in 
popularity,  though  on  the  whole  the  pro- 
founder  and  more  poetic  readers  give  them 
the  preference. 

Here  then,  we  are  to  emphasize  a  salient 
fact  of  the  present  Epoch:  the  one  great  lit- 
erary movement  is  composed  of  two  poets, 
interacting  and  co-operating  to  a  single  end ; 
each  of  them  while  pursuing  his  own  special 
tendency  reflects  the  tendency  of  the  other 
also  in  his  creations ;  Schiller  naturally  Ger- 
man or  Romantic  joins  to  his  own  native 
strand  the  Classic  adopted  from  Goethe; 
while  the  latter,  at  present  full  of  his  Classic 
bent  is  stimulated  by  Schiller  to  realize  his 
German  heritage.  Thus  they  circle  about 
each  other,  double  suns  as  it  were,  each  in  its 
own  orbit,  yet  influencing  the  motion  of  the 
other,  and  both  together  producing  one  grand 
illumination.  So  they  run  double,  each  poet 
sharing  in  the  other  while  remaining  him- 
self, whereby  they  become  one  great  totality 
of  spirit.  Hence  it  comes  that  Goethe  re- 
peatedly speaks  of  himself  as  a  half  of  this 
one  higher  process ;  when  Schiller  has  passed 
beyond  he  feels  that  he  is  but  the  moiety  left 
behind. 


GOETHE'S  ASSOCIATION  WITH  SCHILLER.        407 

The  foregoing  statement  is  peculiarly  true 
of  their  lyrical  production,  which  rises  to  the 
best  of  its  kind.  But  when  it  comes  to  what 
may  be  in  general  called  their  epic  and  dra- 
matic creation,  they  showed  a  tendency  to 
separate.  Schiller  became  supremely  the 
dramatic  poet  while  Goethe  leaned  to  the  epic 
though  by  no  means  eschewing  the  drama. 
Still  the  interest  is  that  even  as  different  or 
as  opposite  they  form  one  transcendent  spir- 
itual Whole  which  constitutes  the  unity  of 
the  Epoch.  Each  of  them  to  be  the  other's 
adequate  counterpart  is  spurred  to  his  high- 
est endeavor  just  in  the  fruitful  season  of 
life.  The  result  is  an  enormous  output  of  ex- 
cellence rivaled  nowhere  else  at  that  time  in 
the  literary  realm;  Weimar  became  the  po- 
etic voice  of  Europe,  the  World-Spirit  spoke 
German  during  this  Goethe-Schiller  Epoch. 

VI.-  No  account  of  these  spiritually 
twinned  souls  can  be  complete  without  con- 
sidering their  physical  contrast  and  its  effect 
upon  both.  Schiller  was  a  perpetual  invalid ; 
when  Goethe  invited  him  to  make  a  visit,  he 
accepted  with  the  proviso  that  he  should  have 
the  privilege  of  being  sick.  He  represented 
mortality  itself  in  his  body,  ever  nagging 
him  with  pain  and  unstringing  him  for  work. 
Still  he  valiantly  kept  up  the  struggle,  fight- 
ing death's  hand  at  his  throat  for  these  ten 


408          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

years — the  mortal  striving  to  circumvent 
Fate  and  to  become  immortal.  No  wonder 
he  wrote  tragedies;  he  lived  them,  ever  re- 
minded by  suffering  of  his  approaching  evan- 
ishment.  The  ideal  versus  the  real  was  incor- 
porate in  Schiller,  who  had  good  reason  to 
hate  the  physical  element  in  himself  which 
tortured  him  so  cruelly  and  persistently. 
Thus  he  was  born  fated  by  nature;  even 
barely  to  live  he  had  to  be  a  fate-compeller. 
He  seems  to  have  had  a  premonition  of  his 
early  dissolution,  and  so  he  wrought  in  defi-  ^ 
ance  of  illness  and  pain  that  his  immortal 
task  might  be  fairly  done  when  the  bell  tolled. 
Very  different  in  physical  equipment  was 
Goethe,  who  towered  up  Nature's  darling  in 
form,  health  and  activity.  To  be  sure  he.  had 
at  times  furious  spells  of  illness,  doubtless 
his  body's  punishment  for  violation  of  its 
laws.  But  he  would  get  up  again  in  recov- 
ered strength  and  spirit.  Why  should  he  not 
love  nature  who  loved  him  with  a  sort  of  pas- 
sion and  showered  him  with  her  rarest  gifts  ? 
In  his  physical  frame  the  ideal  lived  incar- 
nate and  never  had  to  fight  for  its  very  exist- 
ence as  was  the  case  with  Schiller.  His  or- 
ganism was  already  an  ideal  realized;  the 
fierce  dualism  between  the  two  sides,  which 
was  so  characteristic  of  Schiller's  work  and 
even  of  his  body,  was  not  practically  present 


.*• 
GOETHE'S  ASSOCIATION  WITH  SCHILLER.        409 

to  Goethe.  So  we  may  say  that  the  idealism 
of  the  one  and  the  realism  of  the  other  was 
primarily  conditioned  in  their  corporeal  ex- 
istence. By  themselves  they  were  in  danger 
of  excess,  each  needed  the  corrective  of  the 
other.  Goethe's  very  shape  was  the  native 
home  of  love,  he  was  the  born  Phileros  in  out- 
ward figure,  the  sensuous  counterpart  to 
etherialized  Schiller. 

VII.  There  was  another  and  deeper  side 
to  Schiller's  invalidism,  which  Goethe  did  not 
fail  to  feel  and  of  which  he  drew  the  religious 
analogy.  The  latter  compares  Schiller  on 
account  of  his  incessant  pain,  to  the  suffering 
Christ,  and  after  he  was  gone,  looked  back  at 
him  with  a  reverential  feeling  akin  to  behold- 
ing the  Crucified.  So  the  poet  meditates :  "in 
Schiller  this  Christ-tendency  was  inborn. " 
The  sight  of  the  visible  passion  of  a  great  man 
who  was  his  dearest  friend  was  able  to  make 
Goethe  realize  in  his  heart  and  intellect  the 
Christian  Idea,  which  he  saw  actually  em- 
bodied in  that  anguished  frame  still  doing  its 
work.  The  literal  fact  before  his  eyes  for 
years  affected  him  far  more  deeply  than  all 
the  pictured  crucifixions  of  which  Italy  was 
full,  and  from  which  he  turned  away  with  in- 
difference if  not  with  aversion.  We  may  well 
suppose  that  his  one-sided  Greek  world-view 
got  a  shock  when  he  contemplated  Schiller's 


410          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

life-long  tribulation  not  only  patiently  en- 
dured but  spiritually  transcended.  Of  this 
peculiar  experience  he  has  cast  a  shadowy 
image  in  his  Meister's  Journey  manship 
where  he  puts  stress  upon  the  religion  of 
suffering,  which  is  the  Christian,  and  where 
he  employs  veneration  so  strikingly  as  an 
element  of  youthful  education  in  his  so-called 
Pedagogic  Province.  Goethe  was  in  his  way 
Christianized  by  the  epiphany  of  Schiller 
whose  life,  suffering  and  death  became  to 
him  an  actual  manifestation,  or  if  you  wish, 
re-incarnation  of  the  Great  Sufferer,  and 
their  common  life  during  the  present  Epoch 
was  transfigured  into  a  unique  religious  ex- 
perience which  in  his  latter  days  he  contem- 
plated with  a  kind  of  worship.  I  believe  that 
the  religious  tone  which  runs  through  a  good 
deal  of  his  J ourneymansliip  of  Meister,  writ- 
ten mostly  in  his  old  age,  takes  its  origin  from 
his  sympathy  with  the  living  sorrow  of  Schil- 
ler, who  thus  became  to  him  a  sort  of  sacred 
mediator  enacting  a  Gospel  of  Suffering  pres- 
ent, visible,  real.  We  have  often  heard  him 
say  already  that  he  could  only  write  what  he 
had  actually  experienced,  making  it  also  his 
confession;  so  in  the  present  case  he  must 
have  written  what  he  had  already  lived. 

We  may  also  note  in  Schiller 's  own  poetry 
the  effect  of  his  never-resting  struggle  with 


GOETHE' 8  ASSOCIATION  WITH  SCHILLER.        411 

the  pain  of  existence,  over  which  he  had  to 
rise  triumphant  in  every  piece  he  wrote. 
Hence  there  is  in  his  style  an  uplift  even  of 
the  words,  an  elevation  of  the  spirit  over  its 
earthy  physical  portion,  a  winged  flight  of 
the  ideal  away  from  the  real,  to  which  Goe- 
the on  the  other  hand  was  inclined  to  cling, 
fetching  down  to  it  his  ideal.  Thus  Schiller's 
Genius  hoists  him  out  of  suffering  through 
his  pen,  and  his  utterance  bears  deeply  the 
stamp  of  such  an  act  of  exaltation.  His  life 
shows  what  man  is  to  do  with  pain,  misfor- 
tune, sorrow— transcend  it,  yea,  transfigure 
it  into  an  immortal  deed. 

In  this  way  we  conceive  the  deepest  strain 
of  Schiller's  character  to  be  mediatorial;  es- 
pecially was  he  a  spiritual  mediator"  for  his 
friend  Goethe,  the  estranged,  isolated,  soli- 
tary, reconciling  the  latter  with  himself  and 
his  world,  and  thereby  starting  again  his 
Genius  into  a  new  era  of  creation  which  in 
productivity  resembles  the  Frankfort  Epoch. 
He  needed  a  second  Self  to  reflect  him,  to 
show  him  what  he  was  and  could  still  do,  and 
to  dare  even  correct  him  if  he  should  stray. 
He  recognized  Schiller's  function  toward 
himself  and  cried  out  in  joyous  approval: 
"Go  on  and  continue  to  make  me  acquainted 
with  my  own  work  and  myself. 9 '  Many  pas- 
sages of  their  Correspondence  have  this  pur- 


412          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

port.  He  sends  one  of  his  productions  to 
Schiller  and  begs  him  to  tell  what  it  means, 
as  he  himself  does  not  know,  having  written 
it  in  his  supra-conscious  mood:  " Think  it 
over  and  then  as  true  prophet  interpret  my 
dreams. "  Goethe  claimed  that  when  writing 
he  fell  into  a  state  resembling  somnambulism. 
It  is  perhaps  not  too  much  to  say  that  Goe- 
the won  his  poetic  salvation  through  his  as- 
sociation with  Schiller.  He  was  a  lost  soul 
till  he  was  picked  up  and  saved  by  Schiller, 
as  he  himself  intimates.  Still  this  is  not  to 
affirm  that  Schiller  was  the  greater  poet. 
Says  he  in  a  letter:  "Compared  to  Goethe 
I  am  and  remain  a  poetical  blatherskite 
(Lump).99  Nevertheless  he  was  aware  that  he 
possessed  qualities  which  Goethe  had  not: 
1  i  something  remains  to  me  and  is  mine  which 
he  can  never  reach. ' '  Moreover  he  had  a  pre- 
sentiment that  he  would  never  live  to  round 
out  his  career.  Pathetic  is  his  fbrecast  of  a 
life  unfinished:  "I  shall  hardly  have  time  to 
complete  in  myself  a  great  and  universal 
spiritual  revolution;  but  I  shall  do  what  I 
can,  and  when  the  building  at  last  collapses, 
I  shall  have  rescued  perhaps  something  wor- 
thy of  preservation  from  the  ruin."  (From 
a  letter  to  Goethe  in  1794).  He  seems  also 
to  have  had  a  forefeeling  that  Goethe  was 
destined  to  fill  to  completeness  the  full  cycle 


GOETHE'S  ASSOCIATION  WITH  SCHILLER.        413 

of  life  in  contrast  to  his  own  limited  achieve- 
ment sapped  by  sickness  and  finally  cut  short 
by  fate. 

VIII.  In  such  way  we  seek  to  realize  to 
ourselves  the  place  of  the  present  unique 
Epoch  in  Goethe's  total  life-poem,  in  which  it 
performs  a  sovereign  function  different  from 
that  of  any  other  Epoch  before  or  afterward, 
centered  as  it  is  in  the  middle  of  them  all. 
Genius  now  falls  in  love  with  Genius,  each 
stirring  the  other  to  an  intense  productive 
energy,  which  culminates  in  the  greatest 
works  of  both.  We  may  call  it  friendship,  but 
it  was  something  more ;  each  had  friends  out- 
side of  this  tie  which  was  singular  in  demand- 
ing the  responsive  power  of  creation.  Goe- 
the's Genius  was  the  portion  of  him  which 
was  isolated  till  he  found  its  comrade  in  Schil- 
ler who  feels  its  loneliness  and  despair,  and 
starts  it  to  fresh  activity  and  hope.  Goethe 
was  solitary  because  he  had  no  Genius  to 
love  and  to  be  loved  by;  that  part  Christiane 
could  not  fill.  He  had  reached  the  nodal  Ep- 
och in  his  evolution  when  he  must  find  his 
creational  counterpart  in  order  to  be  whole 
himself.  He  needs  a  .complementary  spirit 
not  simply  to  appreciate  him  but  to  recreate 
him  in  his  very  creation,  and  thus  to  reveal 
him  to  himself  and  to  bring  him  to  his  com- 
plete fulfilment.  As  the  one  solitary  Genius 


414    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

standing  by  himself  he  had  quite  done  his 
task,  and  was  drooping  to  inactivity,  if  not 
exhaustion.  He  must  now  produce  not  sim- 
ply great  works,  but  reproduce  his  Genius 
itself  in  living  independent  activity,  which 
runs  a  creative  parallel  with  his  own.  The 
highest  act  of  God  is  to  create  another  God 
quite  on  a  par  with  himself.  So  Goethe  loves 
Schiller's  Genius  creatively  and  without 
question  brings  it  to  its  highest  productive 
efficiency.  And  Schiller  loves  Goethe's 
Genius  creatively,  stimulating  it  and  even 
unfolding  it  to  its  sovereign  supremacy. 
Thus  they  not  only  made  great  poems,  but 
made  one  another  making  great  poems.  Both 
at  their  best  seemed  to  share  in  God's  crea- 
tional  love,  not  so  much  man's — that  love 
which  primordially  created  the  Universe. 

But  what  then  about  our  Phileros,  the 
lover  of  love,  peculiarly  of  woman's  love? 
The  fact  is  that  the  intensely  sexed  emotional 
nature  which  he  has  hitherto  manifested 
drops  into  the  background  during  the  entire 
present  Decennium,  seeming  to  become  qui- 
escent with  the  advent  of  Schiller.  Such  is 
probably  the  most  strangely  elusive  psycho- 
logical phenomenon  of  his  whole  love-life. 
Hitherto  the  love  of  woman  has  been  Goe- 
the's chief  stimulus  to  literary  production; 
but  now  a  man's  love,  therefore  quite  un- 


t- 
WORKS   IN'  PARTNERSHIP.  415 

sexed,  is  what  stirs  his  fresh  creative  energy; 
his  Genius  has  risen  to  love  its  own,  its  very 
selfhood  in  another  Genius,  which  in  turn 
impregnates  it  to  a  new  birth  of  its  highest 
potency.  There  has  arisen  the  mutual  bond 
of  love,  not  of  female  with  male,  but  seem- 
ingly supra-sexual,  universal,  as  participat- 
ing in  the  original  divine  essence  of  creation. 
So  we  may  well  deem  it  a  unique  manifesta- 
tion not  simply  in  Goethe's  life-poem,  but  in 
all  Literature. 

Thus,  however,  our  Phileros  passes  into  a 
time  of  eclipse,  not  by  any  means  dead,  but 
reposing  quietly  in  a  state  of  abeyance.  Take 
heart,  0,  Phileros;  Fate  will  snatch  Schiller 
away,  and  thou  shalt  pass  out  of  thy  ob- 
scuration ;  thou  shalt  love  again  in  full  youth- 
ful fervor,  love  woman  again,  defiant  of  all 
the  envious  wrinkles  of  old-age. 


i. 

Works  in  Partnership. 

The  associated  life  of  Goethe  and  Schiller 
may  be  first  regarded  as  immediately  and  per- 
sonally co-operative  in  producing  certain  of 
their  works.  That  is,  they  wrote  some  books 
in  common,  and  neither  of  the  two  at  times 
could  separate  his  respective  share  of  author- 


416          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

ship.  Then  each  of  them  would  perform  his 
distinct  part  in  a  joint  production.  This  col- 
laboration was  specially  pronounced  in  the 
earlier  part  of  their  decennial  friendship. 
We  shall  select  three  works  which  illustrate 
various  phases  of  their  partnership  in  writ- 
ing as  well  as  of  their  deep  community  of  feel- 
ing, whereby  each  seemed  to  supplement 
what  was  lacking  in  the  other,  thus  forming 
a  kind  of  common  personality  in  which  both 
participated  yet  it  was  over  both.  The  works 
selected  are  The  Correspondence,  The  Xenia, 
and  The  Ballads  and  Elegies. 

I.  The  Goethe-Schiller  Correspondence 
runs  through  the  entire  ten  years  and  more, 
and  lasts,  according  to  the  dated  letters,  from 
June,  1794,  till  April,  1805.  It  may  well 
be  considered  a  unique  book  in  literature,  in- 
ducting the  reader  into  the  very  workshop  of 
two  great  poets  who  were  bringing  forth  a 
world-historical  Epoch  in  their  art.  More- 
over both  were  at  the  culmination  of  their  cre- 
ative power,  and  stimulated  each  other  to  the 
topmost  excellence.  We  follow  their  pro- 
found study  in  literary  forms — epic  dra- 
matic, lyric,  novelistic  and  other  lesser  ones 
— which  study  they  undertake  not  for  the 
purpose  of  constructing  a  methodical  Aes- 
thetic, but  of  applying  immediately  their 
principles  to  produce  the  highest  original 


0 
WORKS   IN   PARTNERSHIP.  417 

works.  Thus  it  is  a  kind  of  living  Poetic, 
hence  far  more  vital  than  any  philosophical 
treatise  from  Aristotle  down.  They  are 
bent  on  becoming  conscious  of  their  artistic 
process  that  it  may  reach  its  supreme  ful- 
filment. Both  poets  have  had  their  instinct- 
ive, unconscious  time — Schiller  in  his  Rob- 
bers and  Goethe  in  the  products  of  his  Frank- 
fort Epoch — which  time,  though  Titanic  in 
its  outbreak,  they  must  transcend  and  be- 
come ordered,  rational,  self-knowing  in  their 
work,  yet  with  the  full  spontaneous  flow  of 
their  Genius  held  within  the  bounds  of  rea- 
son. Such  is  the  first  very  suggestive  lesson 
to  be  derived  from  this  book:  knowledge  is 
not  going  to  destroy  invention,  but  to  give  it 
intelligent  direction;  philosophy  is  not  hos- 
tile to  poetry,  but  necessary  to  its  perfect 
creation ;  Goethe 's  intuition  has  to  be  supple- 
mented by  Schiller's  reflection  ere  it  can 
again  be  productive  of  its  poetic  wealth,  and 
achieve  its  true  destiny.  Each  imparts  him- 
self to  the  other  and  thus  both  form  one  com- 
plete supereminent  Whole,  a  kind  of  Over- 
man, in  them  yet  above  them,  and  greater 
than  either  alone.  Thus  their  association  is 
not  merely  internal  or  subjective  in  each,  but 
a  grand  objective  fact, 'existent  of  itself  in  the 
world  and  epochal  in  its  literature. 

Goethe,  the  long  survivor  of  the  twain,  was 


418          GOETHE'S  LIFE -POEM. —PART  SECOND. 

well  aware  of  the  value  of  this  Correspond- 
ence. Nearly  twenty  years  after  its  conclu- 
sion he  began  to  revise  these  letters  for 
print ;  he  speaks  of  them  at  the  time  in  a  let- 
ter to  Zelter :  i '  the  work  will  be  a  great  gift, 
which  is  offered  not  only  to  Germans,  but  I 
dare  say,  to  mankind. "  When  this  was  writ- 
ten, he  was  well  aware  of  his  place  in  uni- 
versal literature,  in  which  the  Goethe-Schil- 
ler Epoch  occupies  a  lofty  original  niche. 
Hence  this  book,  which  is  a  record  of  the  in- 
ner evolution  of  that  Epoch  in  the  souls  of 
its  two  protagonists,  he  could  rightfully  pro- 
claim as  a  great  present  to  the  literary  world. 
Goethe,  in  his  dedication  to  King  Louis  I.  of 
Bavaria,  intimates  the  part  which  the  work 
played  in  his  personal  development,  since  it 
recounts  the  breaking-up  of  his  previous  iso- 
lation, when  he  lacked  a  friend  who  could  give 
him  "an  inner  confidential  sympathy/'  and 
when  he  missed  all  * '  spiritual  incitement  and 
whatever  might  stimulate  a  praiseworthy 
emulation. ' '  Thus  the  book  marks  the  transi- 
tion from  his  solitary  Epoch  to  his  associated 
life  with  Schiller. 

The  chief  part  of  the  Correspondence  took 
place  while  Schiller  was  at  Jena.  But  in 
1799  he  changed  his  residence  to  Weimar, 
where  the  two  friends  could  communicate  per- 
sonally whenever  they  chose.  So  the  book 


.*- 

WORKS   IN   PARTNERSHIP.  419 

droops  somewhat  in  the  latter  portion.  Also 
they  had  largely  uttered  themselves,  and  the 
zeal  had  become  more  quiescent,  of  course 
without  ceasing.  Besides,  Schiller  had 
evolved  into  his  independent  career  as  a  dra- 
matist, in  which  domain  he  had  outstripped 
Goethe,  who,  however,  gave  him  all  sorts  of 
support,  practical  and  theoretical.  Schiller's 
"Camp  of  Wallenstein,"  staged  in  1798,  was 
the  beginning  of  the  poet's  literary  auton- 
omy; his  work  stood  in  its  own  right  of  su- 
premacy and  had  no  rival.  This  position  he 
held  till  his  death. 

Which  of  the  two  writes  the  best  letters,  is 
a  question  which  has  been  much  discussed, 
and  which  often  comes  up  to  the  reader.  Goe- 
the has  generously  given  the  palm  to  Schil- 
ler: "My  letters  are  not  equal  to  those  of 
Schiller  in  internal  and  independent  value; 
he  was  more  inclined  to  reflection  concerning 
persons  and  writings  than  I,"  and  so  he  sur- 
passes me.  Still  the  fact  that  Goethe's  are 
more  direct  and  spontaneous  makes  a  point 
in  their  favor  with  some  people.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  Schiller 's  are  written  with  greater 
thought  and  care  for  expression  than  those 
of  his  friend.  Moreover  they  have  a  different 
purpose  from  Goethe's,  they  seek  to  stimu- 
late the  solitary  Genius  through  apprecia- 
tion, in  fact  through  recreation  of  his  work. 


420         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

II.  In  the  famous  Xenia  the  bond  be- 
tween Goethe  and  Schiller  is  not  only  co-op- 
erative and  mutually  instructive,  each  one 
holding  a  mirror  up  to  the  other  after  his 
own  way,  as  in  the  Correspondence,  but  it 
becomes  intergrown  in  a  common  work,  the 
friendship  turns  to  a  twinship  both  in  con- 
ception and  execution.  This  was  strikingly 
stated  by  Goethe  long  afterwards  in  a  talk 
with  Eckermann:  "Often  I  had  the  thought 
and  Schiller  made  the  verses,  often  just  the 
opposite  took  place ;  often  Schiller  made  one 
line  of  the  distich  and  I  the  other.  How  can 
anybody  talk  of  mine  and  thine  in  such  a 
case!"  Such  was  indeed  the  most  intimate 
stage  of  their  association:  the  two  brains 
were  composing  not  merely  the  same  book 
but  the  same  sentence.  Here  we  may  well  be- 
hold their  most  internal  point  of  conjunction : 
two  strong  poetic  individualities  were  fused 
into  one  creative  act.  Schiller  gives  his  bit 
of  evidence  to  the  same  effect  in  a  letter  to 
W.  Von  Humboldt:  "There  was  a  formal 
agreement  between  Goethe  and  myself  that 
our  special  rights  of  property  in  the  epi- 
grams singly  should  never  be  explained — but 
we  resolved  to  let  the  matter  rest  on  itself  to 
all  eternity. "  Still  the  secret  got  out  and  it 
is  known  pretty  well  today  which  belong  to 
each. 


.•*• 

WORKS   IN   PARTNERSHIP.  421 

These  Xenia  are  elegiac  hexameters  of  two 
lines,  and  go  back  for  their  meter  and  gen- 
eral character  to  the  Roman  poet  Martial, 
who,  however,  found  his  original  as  to  pur- 
port and  form  in  the  Greek  Epigram,  sam- 
ples of  which  may  be  seen  in  the  Greek  An- 
thology. Thus  they  are  of  classic  birth,  and 
were  suggested  by  Goethe  in  regard  to  both 
their  form  and  scope.  Hence  they  show  a 
continuation  of  his  epigrammatic  mood  which 
has  been  already  noted.  Schiller  adopted 
eagerly  the  idea,  and  soon  surpassed  the  mas- 
ter who  praised  his  associate's  Xenia  as 
"more  pointed  and  home-hitting "  than  his 
own,  and  it  is  evident  that  they  are  more 
carefully  composed  and  metered.  The  in- 
teresting fact  here  is  that  Schiller  is  appro- 
priating Goethe's  classicism,  and  in  the  best 
sense  is  learning  to  reproduce  Hellas  in  Ger- 
many, which  instruction  he  will  not  fail  to 
keep  up  and  realize.  Both  poets  are  making 
the  Greek  spirit  talk  German. 

The  chief  purpose  of  the  Xenia  was  to  at- 
tack and  burn  up  with  satirical  fire-brands 
the  existent  mediocrity  in  literature,  art,  and 
science.  That  was  certainly  a  large  job,  for 
the  vast  majority  of  writers  would  be  in- 
volved. The  result  was  an  explosion  violent 
and  wide-spread,  producing  what  is  known  as 
the  war  of  the  Xenia,  for  the  trick  of  the 


422          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

verses  was  at  once  caught  up  and  turned  up- 
on the  inventors,  often  with  telling  effect.  It 
was  largely  a  bitter  personal  fight,  which  to- 
day is  unrefreshing,  and  also  hard  to  fol- 
low, since  most  of  the  people  and  things  as- 
sailed have  sunk  into  total  night,  and  have 
left  behind  to  us  simply  their  obscurity.  It 
was  indeed  a  negative  book  whose  object  was 
to  destroy  a  negation  and  then  vanish  out  of 
the  world. 

Fortunately  the  work  was  so  regarded  by 
its  authors,  who  stopped  it  with  a  single  fu- 
rious cannonade.  Schiller  writes  in  a  letter : 
"Such  weapons  are  to  be  used  only  once,  in 
order  to  lay  them  aside  forever."  Goethe 
also  declares  to  his  ally:  "After  such  a  piece 
of  deviltry  we  must  occupy  ourselves  with 
great  and  worthy  works,  and  transform  our 
Protean  nature  into  the  forms  of  the  good 
and  noble,  to  the  shame  of  our  enemies." 
Very  delightful  and  suggestive  is  it  to  see 
both  the  great  poets  getting  sick  of  their  de- 
bauch of  revenge,  and  turning  to  produce 
great  positive  masterpieces,  which  each  of 
them  now  sends  forth  in  astonishing  fecun- 
dity. To  be  sure  Goethe  is  not  going  to  get 
rid  of  the  negative  strain  inborn  in  his  very 
nature;  here  in  the  Xenia  he  is  the  classic 
Mephistopheles  who  will  later  assume  his 
Teutonic  garb  in  Faust.  As  to  Schiller  he 


WORKS   IN   PARTNERSHIP.  423 

has  become  quite  classicised  by  his  present 
experience,  having  learned  to  handle  skill- 
fully the  Greek  epigram  both  in  its  measure 
and  meaning.  Moreover  he  has  become  an 
integral  portion  of  Goethe's  brain  as  well  as 
heart,  having  participated  in  the  very  act  of 
the  poet's  creation. 

The  Xenia  were  started  in  1795,  the  year 
after  the  first  friendly  interview  between 
Schiller  and  Goethe,  already  recounted.  Thus 
they  form  an  early  but  pivotal  stage  in  their 
association. 

III.  As  a  third  manifestation  of  the  Goe- 
the-Schiller partnership  we  shall  place  the 
Ballads  and  the  Elegies  (not  including  the 
Eoman  Elegies  which  have  already  been  con- 
sidered). These  two  rubrics  indicate  the 
double  character  and  achievement  of  the  two 
poets  and  likewise  of  their  whole  movement 
taken  together.  The  Ballad  is  essentially  a 
Northern  or  Romantic  product,  a  native  po- 
etic growth  of  the  Teutonic  folk;  the  Elegy 
is  classic  in  form  and  suggestion,  even  if 
filled  with  a  modern  spirit — an  interfusion  of 
Hellas  and  Germany,  or  to  use  Goethe's  ideal 
symbol,  the  marriage  of  Faust  and  Helen,  or 
to  take  his  acted  symbol,  the  coupling  of 
Goethe  with  Christiane.  Each  poet  tried 
both  kinds,  in  a  Parnassian  rivalry  with  the 
other ;  the  culmination  was  the  so-called  Bal- 


424          GOETHE'S  LIFE -POEM. —PART  SECOND. 

lad-year  of  1797,  though  it  was  just  as  much 
an  elegiac  time,  especially  for  Goethe,  who 
produced  during  these  months  of  1796-7  his 
finest  Elegies  (Alexis  and  Dora,  Amyutas, 
and  Euphrosyne,  with  several  others)  as  well 
as  a  good  number  of  his  best  Ballads,  headed 
by  the  famous  epical  Ballad  entitled  The 
Bride  of  Corinth.  Schiller  also,  let  it  be  re- 
peated, was  wrought  up  to  the  same  dual  pro- 
ductivity, and  especially  brought  forth  a 
choice  lot  of  his  Ballads,  which  are  today  the 
favorite  poems  of  the  German  people.  But 
he  likewise  took  a  tilt  at  the  classic  elegiac 
stanza  and  produced  a  noteworthy  cluster  of 
Epigrams  and  Elegies  in  the  ancient  manner. 

Schiller  would  be  the  first  to  confess  that 
he  was  stimulated  to  both  these  forms  of  po- 
etic utterance  by  Goethe's  precept  and  exam- 
ple. His  glory  is  that  following  another  in 
deep  love  and  loyalty,  he  found  himself  and 
reached  his  own  independent  creative  power. 
It  is  unjust  to  say  that  Schiller  merely  imi- 
tated and  reflected  Goethe ;  he  did  so  undoubt- 
edly, but  that  was  only  a  stepping-stone  to 
his  own  true  Self ;  he  was  trained  by  a  Genius 
to  discover  and  realize  his  own  Genius  . 

In  the  Ballads  we  find  the  most  striking 
manifestation  of  their  respective  powers. 
Schiller  was  essentially  dramatic,  he  loved 
the  action,  even  the  external  action,  for  its 


WORKS   IN  PARTNERSHIP.  425 

own  sake,  being  full  of  life  and  movement. 
But  Goethe's  Ballads  on  the  whole  lack  this 
outer  push,  they  turn  to  the  inner  world  and 
set  forth  its  resurgences  and  conflicts  and 
harmonies.  Emotion  rather  than  motion, 
sentiments  more  than  sensations,  were  his 
in  comparison ;  the  play  of  incident  was  less, 
the  play  of  internality  was  more  for  him; 
Schiller  was  deeply  historic,  Goethe  deeply 
unhistoric.  Schiller  loved  the  moral,  Goe- 
the loved  the  mythical,  and  was  strongly 
inclined  to  set  forth  the  upper  mysterious 
Energies  as  interwoven  in  the  human 
deed.  Hence  Goethe's  Ballads  chiefly  spring 
from  a  Mythus  either  borrowed  or  made 
by  himself  on  the  spot.  Here  lies  a 
fundamental  distinction:  Schiller  was  not 
easily  mythical,  though  he  trained  himself 
forcibly  in  that  direction;  on  the  other  hand 
Goethe  was  at  his  deepest  a  myth-maker,  and 
could  hardly  help  himself  when  nature  broke 
loose  into  creation.  Hence  he  is  epical  while 
Schiller  is  dramatic.  Another  difference  be- 
tween the  two  is  that  Schiller  cares  little  for 
motivation ;  he  paints  the  occurrences  follow- 
ing one  another  outwardly  with  an  upspring 
and  a  delight  simply  in  the  happenings ;  Goe- 
the runs  to  the  contrary  and  seems  ill  at  ease 
unless  he  can  mirror  the  motives  of  the  ac- 
tion directly  or  indirectly. 


426    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

So  much  for  the  Northern  or  Romantic 
strain  which  both  poets  evolved  to  a  supreme 
excellence.  Never  before  or  since  has  the 
Ballad,  an  elemental  form  of  verse  throbbing 
directly  from  the  popular  heart,  attained  such 
a  stage  of  poetic  affluence,  and  been  made  the 
bearer  of  so  much  of  the  highest  literary  cul- 
ture. The  Ballads  of  Goethe  and  Schiller,  in 
their  unity  as  well  as  in  their  diversity, 
through  their  form  as  well  as  through  their 
content,  are  epochal  in  the  history  of  Litera- 
ture. They  stream  along  the  greater  part  of 
the  present  Decennium,  and  in  the  opinion  of 
many,  are  its  topmost  product,  not  excepting 
Wallenstein  and  Faust. 

The  second  strain,  the  Classic  or  South- 
ern, is  seen  in  the  Elegies,  with  many  a  little 
spurt  of  poetry  jetting  up  in  the  elegiac  epi- 
grams, which  were  cultivated  by  both  poets, 
but  must  be  here  passed  over.  Their  Elegies 
cannot  be  said  to  have  ever  been  fully  popu- 
larized, in  spite  of  their  excellence,  on  ac- 
count of  their  alien  classic  measures.  Still 
the  culture  seekers  may  well  read  this  poetry 
as  the  best  introduction  to  the  source  of  all 
culture,  namely  the  Hellenic  spirit.  It  is  still 
the  highest  part  of  a  complete  classical 
course ;  two  great  poets  make  the  dry  gram- 
mar and  dictionary  of  the  ancient  Latin  and 
Greek  flower  forth  into  present  life.  Thus 


WlLHELM  MEISTER'S  APPRENTICESHIP.      427 

these  antique-metered  poems  of  Goethe  and 
Schiller  form  the  most  delightful  itinerary 
from  the  old  world  of  the  past  into  the  world 
of  today.  Nowhere  else  in  European  Litera- 
ture is  to  be  found  such  a  poetic  avenue  con- 
ducting us  back  to  Rome  and  Hellas. 


II. 

WilJielm  Meister's  Apprenticeship. 

Hardly  can  it  be  blamed  or  praised  too 
much;  yet  it  contains  deeply  imbedded  in 
all  its  errors  and  transgressions  an  eternal 
element.  Thus  it  is  like  Goethe  himself,  a 
very  human  mixture  of  good  and  evil,  of  sin- 
ner and  saint,  of  Inferno  and  Paradise. 
Hence  stream  out  of  it  two  lines  of  criticism, 
damnatory  and  laudatory;  indeed  the  same 
person  reading  it  and  appropriating  it  with 
open-minded  impartiality  is  jerked  through 
the  whole  gamut  of  damnation  and  laudation. 
Not  only  is  Wilhelm  discerned  in  Goethe 
himself  who  once  called  him  "my  beloved 
Double;"  not  only  is  he  the  rather  mysteri- 
ous and  mystifying  uncle,  or  the  variable 
lover  Lothario,  or  any  other  personage  with 
whom  he  has  been  identified;  the  book  itself 
is  Goethe,  its  character  his  character,  both  in 
its  strength  and  weakness.  It  is  accordingly 


428         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

the  best  picture  of  his  Protean  nature  at  this 
time,  being  a  kind  of  summary  of  his  ex- 
periences up  to  date,  a  biographic  novel  in  his 
life-poem. 

In  origin  it  reaches  back  to  the  early  part 
of  his  Weimar  Epoch,  quite  contemporary 
with  Werther  to  which  the  first  portions  of 
it  bear  frequently  a  resemblance  in  style  and 
content.  The  earliest  written  intimation  of 
its  existence  we  have  in  Goethe's  .diary: 
"February  16,  1777— in  the  garden,  dictated 
on  Wilhelm  Meister."  This  would  imply 
that  the  work  was  already  in  full  swing.  It 
was  an  evolutionary  product  and  could  not 
be  completed  till  time  had  ripened  it.  So  it 
meandered  underground  through  the  Frank- 
fort and  Weimar  Epochs,  and  took  a  plunge 
into  Italy  along  with  the  author,  who  writes 
thence :  "At  last  all  will  be  taken  up  and  in- 
cluded in  Wilhelm" — all  his  experiences,  ob- 
servations and  even  personal  acquaintances. 
Still  the  work  would  not  get  completed, 
though  he  put  himself  under  the  outer  press- 
ure of  a  promise  to  his  publisher.  So  the  mat- 
ter stood  in  1794,  wrhen  his  association  with 
Schiller  came  to  his  aid  with  its  inner  incite- 
ment through  appreciation  and  loving 
urgency.  It  may  be  doubted  if  Goethe  would 
or  could  ever  have  finished  it,  at  least  in  its 
present  form,  if  the  right  man  with  the  right 


WILHELM  MEISTER'S  APPRENTICESHIP.      429 

help  had  not  come  to  him  at  the  right  mo- 
ment. 

Thus  Schiller  was  a  kind  of  collaborator 
with  Goethe  in  this  part  of  Meister,  the  one 
as  philosopher  furnishing  the  principles,  the 
other  as  poet  applying  them  to  his  art.  Goe- 
the  writes  to  his  friend:  "You  will  not  fail 
to  recognize  your  influence  upon  the  book, 
for  certainly  without  our  relation,  I  would 
hardly  have  been  able  to  have  brought  the 
whole  to  a  conclusion,  at  least  not  in  this 
way.  A  hundred  times,  when  I  have  been 
discussing  with  you  theory  and  example,  I 
had  in  mind  the  situations  which  lie  before 
you  in  the  novel,  and  I  judged  them  silently 
according  the  principle  on  which  we  agreed. ' ' 
That  tells  the  story  (Correspondence,  July 
7,  1796),  and  many  similar  citations  could  be 
made  from  this  one  source.  In  the  same  let- 
ter Goethe  begs  "his  other  half,"  the  reflec- 
tive, to  take  a  survey  over  "the  entire  mass" 
before  it  goes  back  to  the  printer,  "as  I  am 
totally  unable  to  do  anything  of  the  kind, 
and  what  I  can  not  see  through  your  eyes, 
will  perhaps  remain  long  concealed  from 
me."  He  cannot  behold  his  own  as  it  is,  or 
himself  as  he  is.  Hence  he  cries  out:  "how 
much  more  advantageous  is  it  to  mirror 
yourself  in  others  than  in  yourself!"  This 
suggests  the  general  character  of  the  entire 


430          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

Correspondence:  each  letter-writer  is  train- 
ing the  other  in  what  he  lacks  and  thus  to 
reach  a  completer  selfhood.  Goethe  is  learn- 
ing to  see  himself,  and  thus  to  transcend  his 
limitation.  The  truth  is  he  had  little  power  of 
reflective  introspection  and  did  not  like  it; 
Schiller  was,  therefore,  his  spiritual  looking- 
glass,  no  doubt  very  favorable,  still  faithful 
even  if  magnifying.  Goethe  needed  a  soul  to 
mirror  him,  not  for  flattery  but  for  self- 
knowledge.  Eckermann  performed  such  a 
function  for  him  in  late  life,  but  was  only  ap- 
preciative, hardly  creative.  But  Schiller  re- 
flected him  not  alone  imitatively  but  cre- 
atively, could  enter  into  the  genetic  source 
itself  of  the  work  and  start  that  to  flowing  in 
idea,  and  thus  show  wherein  the  execution 
had  fallen  short.  He  was  Goethe's  own  re- 
vealer  to  himself,  not  in  all  things  of  course, 
but  in  some  of  his  subtlest  crooks  and  cor- 
ners. He  philosophized  not  only  Goethe's  art 
but  Goethe's  self.  His  letters  on  the  poet's 
Meister,  while  this  was  in  the  very  process  of 
being  formed  show  him  the  participator  in 
the  act  of  its  creation,  especially  of  the  later 
Books.  Hence  the  Novel  belongs  profoundly 
to  the  associated  life  of  the  two  friends. 

We  have  said  that  Wilhelm  Meister  is 
Wolfgang  Goethe,  or  at  least  a  large  part  of 
him  in  a  certain  stage  of  his  career.  We  may 


WILHELM  MEISTER'S  APPRENTICESHIP.      431 

go  further  and  say  that  Wilhelm  Meister  is 
Germany,  especially  as  Goethe  saw  it  during 
this  time.  Its  tendency  to  disunion  and  na- 
tional paralysis,  to  dreaminess  and  excessive 
speculation,  to  a  highly  cultivated  and  di- 
versified subjectivity,  while  neglectful  of  a 
corresponding  outward  energy,  has  its  shift- 
ing image  in  Meister.  The  nation 's  Will 
seemed  quite  hamstrung  while  its  Intellect 
grew  to  enormous  proportion,  with  a  corres- 
ponding productivity.  It  became  the  su- 
preme creative  home  of  philosophy,  music, 
and  poetry — still  unapproached  and  still  to 
be  'fully  appropriated  by  the  rest  of  the 
world.  But  the  back  stroke  of  this  intellec- 
tual plurisy  was  a  certain  national  will-less- 
ness,  the  folk's  indifference'  to  its  own  unity 
and  concentrated  endeavor  as  an  organized 
whole;  its  Genius  shunned  the  deed  and 
turned  inward  to  the  spirit;  its  Great  Men 
were  not  men  of  action,  but  men  of  the  in- 
ner life — the  philosopher,  the  poet,  the  mu- 
sician— Kant  and  Hegel,  Schiller  and  Goe- 
the, Mozart  and  Beethoven,  not  to  speak  of 
other  lesser,  yet  lofty  intelligences  in  the 
same  line  of  development. 

Now  we  hold  that  Germany  in  this  work 
was  fulfilling  a  function  higher  than  that  of 
the  nation,  a  duty  which  for  a  while  de- 
manded the  sacrifice  of  national  unity;  she 


432          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

was  obeying,  had  to  obey  the  bidding  of  the 
time's  uppermost  authority,  the  behest  of 
the  World-Spirit.  Today  it  is  evident  that 
she  was  performing  a  service  for  universal 
human  culture,  doubtless  at  the  expense  of 
her  particular  nationality;  but  she  got  tired 
of  that,  or  perchance  finished  her  work,  and 
turned  off  to  the  next  stage.  Slowly  she 
reacted  from  her  theoretical  bent  to  the  prac- 
tical, from  the  Superman  of  Intellect  to  the 
Superman  of  Will,  from  Germany  the  univer- 
sal to  Germany  the  particular,  passing  at  the 
same  time  from  a  dominating  spiritual  to  a 
dominating  material  pursuit  and  achieve- 
ment. A  similar  transition  we  may  observe 
in  Meister  as  he  moves  out  of  his  vague  and 
varied  cultural  striving  to  the  practical  do- 
main of  Lothario,  from  the  world  of  appear- 
ance on  the  stage  to  the  world  of  actuality  in 
life.  But  mark !  the  first  trend  is  more  fully 
accentuated  than  the  second. 

So  we  dare  say  that  Meister  is  Goethe  or 
a  stage  of  him,  is  Germany  or  a  stage  of  it, 
is  indeed  the  World-Spirit  in  a  faint  and  far- 
off  phasis  which  can  only  be  glimpsed  now 
through  the  historic  perspective  of  more  than 
a  century,  and  from  a  standpoint  outside  of 
Germany.  Very  suggestive  is  the  fact  that 
the  recent  German  biographers  of  Goethe 
discredit  this  novel,  denying  it  as  one  of  the 


WILHELM  MEISTER'S  APPRENTICESHIP.      433 

supreme  works  of  Goethe,  declaring  it  to  be 
transcended,  unpopular,  quite  rejected  by  the 
German  folk-soul.  Their  report  is  probably 
true,  reflecting  both  themselves  and  their 
country  in  its  present  reaction  and  disgust  at 
its  former  Meister  character  and  epoch.  Still 
the  rest  of  cultured  mankind  continue  to  read 
it  and  study  it  as  a  world-book,  which  mirrors 
the  man,  the  nation  and  the  age,  hence  a  uni- 
versally representative  piece  of  writing, 
wherein  lies  its  eternal  element.  Thus  it  is 
a  great  book  when  we  penetrate  to  the  heart 
of  it,  which  does  not  lie  on  the  surface,  though 
a  light-ballasted  novel  in  form;  masterful  it 
is,  in  accord  with  its  name,  despite  all  its 
sins — and  they  are  many — sins  of  omission 
and  commission,  ethical  and  aesthetic,  charm- 
ing and  disgusting. 

Goethe  was  occupied  some  twenty  years 
and  more  in  its  composition,  thus  it  was  a 
slow  deposit  of  his  life.  In  October,  1797, 
Wilhelm  Meister 's  Apprenticeship  started  on 
its  printed  career  down  time,  and  is  still  go- 
ing. In  fact  the  work  kept  on  evolving  in  the 
author's  career  till  his  old  age,  when  in  1829 
more  than  thirty  years  later  Meister's  Jour- 
neymanship  was  completed.  So  it  runs  par- 
alleled with  Faust  through  all  his  epochal 
turns  from  his  youthful  start  at  Frankfort. 
As  there  are  two  parts  of  Faust,  so  there  are 


434    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

two  parts  of  Meister,  in  fact  the  Elective  Af- 
finities was  originally  intended  as  a  tale  for 
Meister 's  Journey manship.  Thus  the  struc- 
tural plan  of  this  novel  overarches  Goethe's 
whole  achievement.  Still  it  is  but  one  span 
in  his  total  life-poem  which  we  are  here  try- 
ing to  grasp  and  to  set  forth.  One  of  his 
early  appreciators  said  to  him :  ' '  What  thou 
livest  is  better  than  what  thou  writest." 
Each  of  his  Meisters  and  all  his  writ  are  but 
fragments  of  his  total  experience  called  life, 
which  must  be  finally  seen  in  its  full  cycle  of 
realized  personality. 

Goethe's  opinion  on  his  own  works  should 
always  be  consulted  even  if  not  always  ac- 
cepted. For  he  sought  to  be  the  self-con- 
scious artist ;  especially  at  the  time  when  he 
was  engaged  on  Meister,  he  was  discussing 
with  Schiller  the  nature  of  the  great  perma- 
nent forms  which  literature  takes — epos,  dra- 
ma, novel — all  of  which  he  would  employ  cre- 
atively. The  central  idea  of  his  book  was 
continually  haunting  him  in  spite  of  his  ex- 
pressed impatience  and  dislike  of  such  a  way. 
of  envisaging  his  work.  So  his  outburst  in  a 
talk  with  Eckermann:  "You  hunt  for  a  cen- 
tral idea :  that  is  hard  to  find,  and  is  of  little 
account  when  found.  I  should  think  that  a 
rich  manifold  life  unrolling  before  our  eyes 
were  in  itself  somewhat,  without  any  pro- 


WILHELM  MEISTER'S  APPRENTICESHIP.      435 

nounced  tendency. "  So  he  takes  his  grum- 
ble seemingly  at  the  other  man,  but  really  at 
himself.  In  like  fashion  he  writes  in  his  An- 
nals :  "It  is  one  of  the  most  incalculable  pro- 
ductions, regarded  either  in  itself  or  in  its 
parts ;  I  doubt  if  I  have  myself  the  criterion 
by  which  to  judge  of  it. ' '  Still  he  will  judge 
of  it  and  state  its  leading  thought  in  a  kind 
of  protest :  "If  you  must  have  its  idea,  take 
these  words  directed  to  Wilhelm  at  the  end 
of  the  novel:  'You  appear  to  me  like  Saul, 
the  son  of  Kis,  who  went  out  to  seek  his  fa- 
ther's asses  and  found  a  kingdom.'  Stick  to 
that."  Not  very  illuminating  here  is  the 
Scriptural  text,  or  close-hitting;  so  he  adds 
the  following:  "at  bottom  the  whole  book 
will  say  nothing  but  this,  that  the  human  be- 
ing, in  spite  of  all  his  stupidities  and  errors, 
is  guided  by  a  higher  hand  and  attains  the 
happy  goal."  So  the  author  claims  that  an 
upper  world  dominates  the  career  of  his 
Meister,  a  kind  of  hidden  providential  over- 
sight. In  a  letter  to  Schiller  he  gives  a  dif- 
ferent turn  to  the  kaleidoscope:  "I  doubt 
if  any  other  unity  will  be  found  in  the  book 
than  a  steadily  progressive  evolution."  That 
is,  the  hero  moves  regularly  from  one  stage 
of  development  to  another:  which  gives  a 
hint  of  the  manner  but  not  of  the  matter. 
But  who  is  the  hero?  Goethe  is  reported  to 


436          GOETHE'S  LIFE -POEM. —PART  SECOND. 

have  declared  that  Mignon  is  not  an  epi- 
sode, "  since  the  whole  work  was  written  for 
this  character. " 

These  diverse  opinions  of  the  author  him- 
self may  be  deemed  so  many  varying  phases 
of  the  many-sided  book,  which  is  not  easy  to 
focus  into  one  central  principle.  The  title  sig- 
nifies an  educational  novel,  a  species  com- 
mon in  the  eighteenth  century  which  was  so 
creatively  pedagogical — the  century  of  Rous- 
seau in  his  culmination,  and  also  of  the  early 
efforts  of  Pestalozzi.  Life  is  here  an  appren- 
ticeship to  the  world-order.  Even  the  nar- 
row setting  of  a  wandering  theatrical  troupe 
had  been  used  before  Goethe  as  the  little  mo- 
ment's stage  representing  the  great  stage  of 
time.  It  has  been  often  questioned  whether 
such  an  environment  for  the  hero  was  a 
happy  choice.  Still  he  transcends  it  and 
passes  into  a  different  and  larger  sphere  of 
activity.  But  all  the  while  there  is  some- 
thing tentative,  uncentered,  unwilled  about 
him ;  he  is  hunting  for  his  vocation  yet  keeps 
trying  to  do  that  for  which  he  has  no  talent. 
Goethe  has  expressed  this  side  of  his  work 
also :  ' "  The  beginning  sprang  from  a  dim 
presentiment  of  the  great  truth  that  man  will 
undertake  what  nature  has  denied  him  and 
will  persist  in  practicing  some  art  for  which 
he  has  no  ability. "  This  is  Goethe,  espe- 


WILHELM  MEISTER'S  APPRENTICESHIP.      437 

cially  in  his  many  attempts  to  be  a  painter, 
and  gives  the  basis  for  his  aversion  to  dilet- 
tantism, almost  monomaniacal.  Meister  is  a 
dilettant,  not  merely  in  commerce,  poetry, 
theater,  but  in  the  art  of  life.  Impression- 
able, ever  receptive  to  the  outside  sensation, 
especially  responsive  to  the  charm  of  women, 
he  is  Phileros  now  looking  back  and  sum- 
moning before  him  the  long  line  of  female 
shapes  through  which  he  has  passed  with 
varied  experiences  in  the  last  two  decades. 
What  a  gallery  of  feminimity,  from  Mariana 
of  the  first  Book  to  Natalia  of  the  last  Book, 
each  set  forth  with  her  own  individuality,  yet 
all  forming  rungs  of  a  ladder  of  his  evolu- 
tionary ascent!  Many  a  woman  reader  re- 
sents this  experimental  use  of  her  sex  and 
throws  the  book  into  the  fire.  Goethe  him- 
self in  a  talk  of  1821  called  Meister  "a  poor 
dog,"  because  of  his  centerless  inconstant 
character,  susceptible  especially  to  every  lit- 
tle flicker  of  the  female  eye  which,  however, 
was  irresistibly  drawn  toward  him,  the  un- 
resisting lover  Phileros.  No  wonder,  as  even 
love-proof  Emerson  could  confess  that  every- 
body loves  a  lover. 

This  novel  is  accordingly  a  vast  reservoir, 
of  experiences  which  are  put  into  the  form 
of  an  apprenticeship  to  the  art  of  life.  The 
best  way  to  catch  its  sweep  is  to  find  its  or- 


43B          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

ganism  which  shows  two  large  parts,  and 
what  we  may  for  the  nonce  call  an  intermezzo. 
So  we  have  the  following  outline : 

I.  The  first  five  Books  give   Wilhelm   in 
his    theatrical    environment,    which    passes 
through  a  number  of  gradations  till  he  cul- 
minates in  playing  Hamlet,    and    concludes 
this  part  of  his  career. 

II.  The  last  two  Books  show  Wilhelm  in 
a  new  stage  of  his  apprenticeship  to  life  and 
art;  he  enters  the  practical  sphere  at  Lotha- 
rio's   castle     (Book    Seventh),    whence    he 
passes  to  the  directly  cultural  realm  in  the 
Hall  of  the  Past,  where  he  beholds  antecedent 
stages  of  culture  eternized  in  art.    This  has 
the  educative  tendency  to   universalize   him 
(as  the  trip  to  Italy  did  for  Goethe). 

III.  The  Sixth  Book,  lying   between   the 
foregoing  two  parts,  seems  an  episode,  and 
is  known  as  the  Confessions  of  a  Fair  Soul 
(Carlyle's  translation  is  Fair  Saint)..   Still 
it  has  certain  strands  connecting  it  with  the 
whole  work,  though  under  the  form  of  an  in- 
termezzo breaking  into  the  connected  story. 
It  may  be  deemed  the  evolution  of  the  purely 
religious  spirit,  which  comes  to  feel  its  lim- 
itation, and  so  takes  up  Art  and  Nature,  re- 
taining its  own  deepest  truth  yet  transcend- 
ing its  one-sidedness.     Thus  it  has  a  lesson 
for  Wilhelm 's  own  training  in  a  very  differ- 


.4- 
WILHELM  MEISTER'S  APPRENTICESHIP.      439 

ent  sphere.  This  Sixth  Book  is  founded  up- 
on Goethe's  experience  with  the  religious 
mystic  Fraulein  Von  Klettenberg,  of  whom 
an  account  has  already  been  given  in  a  for- 
mer chapter. 

The  transition  from  the  first  part  to  the 
second  part  of  the  novel  (omitting  the  inter- 
mezzo) is  the  main  organic  fact  of  the  whole 
work.  It  takes  various  meanings  according 
to  the  viewpoint  of  the  reader.  We  may 
deem  it  the  rise  out  of  the  mere  appearance 
of  life  on  the  stage  to  its  reality.  Or  we  may 
say  it  to  be  the  passage  from  a  disordered 
existence  to  one  ordered  by  society,  from  self- 
will  to  renunciation,  from  one  to  many  or  all 
Apprenticeships  (every  person  being  an  ap- 
prentice like  Wilhelm),  from  a  Lower  World 
of  chance  to  an  Upper  World  of  guidance. 
Finally  we  may  note  the  change  from  the 
Classic  to  the  Eomantic — the  last  Books  be- 
ing full  of  romantic  incident,  treatment  and 
characters.  This  fact  reflects  a  change  in 
Goethe  from  his  purely  Italian  Epoch,  to  his 
double-strained  Epoch  with  Schiller,  which 
unfolds  creatively  on  both  lines,  the  antique 
and  the  modern,  or  the  Classic  and  the 
Romantic.  The  spiritual  transition  of  Meis- 
ter  is  the  spiritual  transition  of  Goethe  at 
this  time.  Moreover  the  conception  and  the 
composition  of  the  first  part  belong  largely 


440          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

to  an  earlier  period — this  part  was  once  com- 
plete in  itself  and  was  called  Wilhelm  Meis- 
ter's  Theatrical  Mission.  But  after  Italy 
had  universalized  the  author,  such  a  work 
seemed  narrow,  and  so  in  harmony  with  his 
own  new  culture  he  universalized  his  book 
and  its  hero  by  adding  the  second  part,  and 
carefully  revising  and  re-styling  the  whole  so 
that  it  would  read  like  a  homogenous  product 
in  form  and  matter,  which  on  the  whole  it 
does,  even  if  we  may  come  upon  certain  re- 
minders of  the  Werther  Epoch. 

The  second  part  of  the  work  is,  then,  dis- 
tinctive through  Goethe's  attempt  to  con- 
struct an  Upper  World  for  the  novel,  its  ep- 
ical or  providential  element  somewhat  like 
Homer's  Gods.  He  evidently  felt  the  deep 
necessity  of  such  a  supernal  Order  over  his 
work.  Here  we  may  note  the  Sixth  Book, 
which  is  a  unique  religious  experience,  can 
be  regarded  on  this  side  as  a  bridge  leading 
over  from  the  lower  to  the  higher  realm.  For 
in  the  first  part  as  above  decribed,  the  move- 
ment seems  quite  left  to  itself,  going  pretty 
much  whither  it  listeth  like  the  anchorless 
wind;  the  man  and  the  book  appear  as  if 
handed  over  to  fate  or  rather  accident,  and 
this  is  Wilhelm 's  spiritual  conviction  as  well 
as  his  conduct  in  this  part.  And  yet  mid  all 
these  wanderings  he  was  secretly  under  guid- 


WILHELM  MEISTER'S  APPRENTICESHIP.      441 

ance,  not  unseen  by  a  Providence  which  now 
and  then  steps  out  of  the  air  and  speaks  a 
warning  word,  and  which  in  the  second  part 
is  to  manifest  itself  openly  in  its  own  right, 
and  even  as  an  organization  of  which  Wil- 
helm  is  to  become  a  member. 

It  may  be  added  that  the  German  critic  of 
today  usually  rejects  this  second  part  of 
Meister,  declaring  it  to  be  mystical,  unreal, 
romantic.  He  dislikes  it  for  the  very  quali- 
ties which  at  the  time  of  its  appearance  made 
it  a  great  and  much-read  favorite.  Hence 
the  book  has  become  a  kind  of  touchstone  for 
marking  the  difference  between  the  present 
Germany  and  Goethe 's  Germany.  Before  me 
lie  two  eminent  recent  biographers  of  the 
poet,  both  of  whom  prefer  the  first  or  the 
rambling  theatrical  part  to  the  second  or 
ideal  part  with  its  organized  Providence.  In 
like  manner  we  hear  in  Homeric  criticism 
that  "the  Gods  do  not  count, "  being  at  most 
a  cunning  piece  of  poetical  machinery. 

On  its  literary  side,  there  is  a  plastic  sense 
and  perfection  which  show  how  deeply  Goe- 
the was  transformed  by  his  stay  in  classic 
Italy.  One  feels  the  plasticity  of  his  words, 
as  they  flow  serene,  limpid,  transparent  into 
sentence  and  paragraph,  and  build  up  before 
us  a  Greek  temple  of  speech.  His  sunniness 
of  style  is  that  of  the  shining  statue  of  the 


442          GOETHE'S  LIFE -POEM. —PART  SECOND. 

Olympian  who  lias  whelmed  the  old  dark  Gods 
into  gloomy  Tartarus,  and  who  now  rules 
above  in  the  daylight  of  clear  outline.  Hence 
we  ramble  mid  the  sculpure  of  his  many 
characters  which  rise  and  pass  before  us  like 
plastic  shapes  in  an  antique  gallery.  Verily 
the  Titans  of  the  Frankfort  Epoch  lie  chained 
in  the  underworld.  Such  is  the  dominant 
classical  strain  of  this  work,  which,  however, 
is  not  exclusive,  for  there  drops  into  it  as  it 
were  from  an  invisible  upper  source  a  mys- 
terious unsunned,  unclassical  element  which 
has  always  caught  the  eye  of  the  romanticist 
with  his  look  into  the  Beyond. 

What  Goethe  said  of  his  works  in  general 
is  true  of  his  Meister.  It  contains  many  a 
confession  in  regard  to  his  life;  especially 
Christiane  and  his  boy,  both  of  them  out- 
lawed by  his  deed,  are  often  imaged  directly 
as  well  as  indirectly,  along  with  the  penalty 
which  is  harassing  his  soul,,  especially  by  way 
of  anticipation  for  the  future.  We  shall  make 
only  one  brief  citation  (Book  VIII,  Chap.  2), 
which  shows  the  father's  anxious  terror,  as 
he  looks  upon  his  illegitimate  scion  (here 
named  Felix)  asleep  in  innocence:  "0  who 
knows  what  trials  are  before  me !  how  sharply 
bygone  transgressions  will  punish  me!" 
Certainly  some  anguish  speaks  in  this.  He 
prays  to  Fate:  "Take  not  away  from  me 


WILHELM  MEISTER'S  APPRENTICESHIP.       443 

this  treasure  which  I  now  possess " — the  one 
child  left  to  him.  l  i  Should  this  best  part  of 
myself  be  snatched  away,  should  this  heart 
be  torn  from  my  heart,  farewell  reason  and 
understanding,  and  may  madness  destroy 
my  very  consciousness  ere  death  brings  on 
the  long  night. "  Such  was  the  tragic  wail 
which  rose  from  the  domestic  hearth  some 
seven  or  eight  years  after  his  "marriage  of 
conscience "  with  Christiane.  Certainly  he 
heard  again  the  song  of  the  Fates  whose  echo 
we  cannot  help  catching  in  the  preceding  pas- 
sage; throughout  this  book  too  he  feels  the 
"conflict  between  him  and  the  Gods"  as  he 
visioned  it  in  the  case  of  Tantalus  "whelmed 
into  gloomy  Tartarus,"  for  surely  here  is 
gloom  enough.  Great  is  the  parent's  affec- 
tion, rising  into  harrowing  anxiety,  for  his 
natural  son  whom  he  now  calls  Felix,  who, 
however,  is  to  become  Infelix  to  himself,  to 
his  father,  as  well  as  to  his  own  wife  and  chil- 
dren. Some  such  anticipation  of  destiny  we 
may  feel  in  the  undercurrents  of  this  Meister, 
as  we  catch  a  foreglimpse  of  Tantalus  who 
"looks  on  his  child  and  shakes  his  head." 

The  farthest-reaching  and  deepest-search- 
ing problem  of  Goethe 's  own  life  is  suggested 
in  the  First  Book  by  the  appearance  of  Mari- 
anne, who  represents  illicit  love  with  its  ille- 
gitimate offspring.  Such  was  his  deed  of 


444         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

Tantalus  which  called  down  upon  him  the 
Judgment  of  the  Gods  with  which  he  wrestled 
all  his  days,  and  which  from  now  on  gives 
the  innermost  thread  which  winds  through 
his  life-poem.  A  gigantic  struggle  with  the 
Fates  of  his  own  deed  we  witness,  one  consid- 
erable phase  of  which  stands  recorded  in  this 
Apprenticeship.  As  already  stated,  Phileros 
is  now  working  out  the  tragic  side  of  his  in- 
born character,  feeling  the  counterstroke  of 
love  itself,  yet  without  becoming  tragic  on  his 
part,  since  he  through  his  Genius  as  the  Fate- 
compeller  can  outface  the  very  wrath  of 
Doom,  singing  his  own  Dies  irae  as  his  paean 
of  salvation. 


III. 

Goethe's  Epical  Mood. 

During  these  years  uprose  in  the  poet 
what  we  may  call  his  epical  mood  and  became 
overwhelming  in  its  push  for  utterance.  Un- 
doubtedly it  sprang  from  a  renewed  study 
of  Homer,  with  w^hom  he  had  been  more  or 
less  familiar  from  youth.  But  after  his  clas- 
sical experience  in  the  South  and  the  con- 
templation of  Greek  Art,  the  old  bard  of  Hel- 
las began  to  have  for  him  an  altogether  new 
meaning  and  to  drive  him  to  poetic  creation 


.*• 

GOETHE'S  EPICAL  MOOD.  445 

or  rather  re-creation.-  He  commenced  to  feel 
that  out  of  Homer  unfolded  that  beautiful 
world  which  he  had  beheld  with  such  rapture 
in  Italy.  Thus  Goethe  has  pushed  back  to 
the  fountain-head  of  the  antique  in  all  its 
forms — poetry,  sculpture,  architecture,  in 
fact  civilization  generally.  Such  an  outreach 
he  had  not  attained  during  his  Italian  Jour- 
ney, in  which  he  had  enough  to  do  if  he  would 
appropriate  what  was  immediately  present  to 
his  senses.  But  now  after  years  of  deep 
brooding  and  study  he  has  mounted  up  to  the 
ideal  genetic  source  of  what  he  saw  there 
realized,  especially  in  its  artistic  manifesta- 
tion. Homer 's  work  appeals  to  him  directly 
for  it  is  poetry  and  sotos  cognate  with  his  own 
deepest  genius,  which  starts  at  once  its  cre- 
ative energy,  seeking  to  reproduce  and  to 
transfuse  that  old  Homeric  world  into  his 
native  speech  and  consciousness. 

Such  bursts  forth  our  poet's  present  epical 
mood,  since  Homer  was  the  father  of  the 
epos  as  a  literary  form  for  all  time,  and  is 
now  the  father  of  Goethe's  chief  productive 
bent.  To  be  sure  this  is  but  a  stage  of  him 
which  he  will  embody  in  writ  and  then  tran- 
scend, being  only  a  single  phase  of  his  total 
poetic  fulfilment.  Thus  Goethe  sings  old 
Homer's  strain,  making  it  one  canto  of  his 
complete  life-poem,  or  one  note  of  his  total 


446         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

song.  Very  intimate  becomes  their  acquaint- 
ance, though  separated  by  more  than  twenty- 
five  centuries.  Indeed  for  a  time  Homer  rises 
to  being  Goethe's  Bible;  the  latter  calls  the 
Homeric  poems  his  Breviary,  from  which  he 
reads  his  daily  prayers,  communing  with  the 
Greek  Gods  and  their  Olympian  Order 
through  their  revealer,  the  poet.  Thus  Goe- 
the, often  titled  the  old  heathen,  not  only 
learned  but  lived  the  Homeric  world-view 
that  he  might  make  his  own  the  native  epical 
consciousness  of  the  aforetime.  Worshipfully 
he  sought  to  share  in  the  form-creating  spirit 
of  Hellas  by  getting  back  to  its  primal  origin. 
Another  kindred  phenomenon  we  may 
stress  in  this  connection :  Goethe's  unique 
sympathy  with  and  loving  mastery  over  the 
hexameter,  the  epical  verse.  He  made  it  the 
responsive  vesture  of  his  Genius  in  his  pres- 
ent mood;  his  soul  seemed  naturally  to  take 
this  antique  measured  shape,  living  and  lov- 
ing in  it.  The  result  is  the  hexameter  has 
been  naturalized  in  both  branches  of  Teu- 
tonic speech,  German  and  English,  not  with- 
out strenuous  and  even  abusive  opposition. 
It  is,  however,  true  that  the  poet  will  get  over 
this  hexametral  spell,  but  not  till  he  has  fully 
uttered  it  and  made  it  an  integral  strain  of 
the  time's  measured  speech  as  well  as  of  his 
own  life-poem.  The  hexameter  is  indeed  the 


.*• 
GOETHE'S  EPICAL  MOOD.  447 

outer  sensible  appearance  of  the  classic  Goe- 
the poetizing  himself,  or  we  may  see  in  it 
Greek  Homer  re-incarnating  himself  in  Ger- 
man Goethe — an  antique  body  with  a  mod- 
ern soul,  which  thus  takes  a  dip  back  into  its 
pre-existent  shape,  in  order  to  be  wholly 
itself  and  round  out  its  evolution. 

We  are  not  surprised  then  to  hear  that 
Goethe  overflowed  with  epics  during  these 
years.  Some  remained  mere  conceptions  or 
designs,  like  The  Chase  which  the  poet  long 
afterward  wrote  out  in  prose  and  called  No- 
velle  (translated  by  Carlyle  in  his  Miscella- 
nies). Another  conception  was  the  epic  of 
Wilhelm  Tell  which  he  conceived  on  a  visit 
to  Switzerland  in  1797,  at  the  view  of  the 
grandeurs  of  the  scenery,  and  on  hearing  the 
story  of  its  hero.  The  hexameters,  he  says, 
began  to  whistle  through  him,  though  none, 
it  seems,  were  written  down,  while  the  action 
and  characters  would  play  out  before  his 
imagination.  But  when  he  came  back  to  Wei- 
mar, he,  after  some  brooding,  imparted  his 
material  to  Schiller,  who  made  out  of  it  his 
famous  drama.  The  truth  is  Goethe  was  not 
the  poet  to  write  the  poem  of  Wilhelm  Tell, 
who  is  the  hero  of  freedom,  an  anti-Goethean 
theme,  especially  during  the  French  Eevolu- 
tion,  and  probably  at  any  time,  if  we  may 
judge  by  his  Egmont.  But  for  Schiller  it  was 


448         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

just  the  subject  suiting  his  temperament  and 
his  genius. 

We  know  that  G-oethe  worked  a  good  deal 
at  Homer  in  Italy,  especially  during  his  Sici- 
lian trip,  where  the  Odyssey  rose  promi- 
nently into  his  vision.  But  the  peculiar  fact 
is  that  then  his  bent  was  toward  dramatic 
composition  in  classic  form;  so  he  conceived 
of  a  Nausicaa  and  even  of  a  Ulysses,  thus 
dramatizing  the  shapes  of  old  Homer.  These 
works,  however,  were  not  realized;  he  ut- 
tered his  Italian  dramatic  mood  in  his  Tril- 
ogy (already  considered).  But  now  the  ep- 
ical strain,  doubtless  an  original  though  as 
yet  implicit  element  of  his  poetic  self,  rises  to 
the  surface  and  insists  upon  expression  as 
never  before  or  afterward.  It  must  have 
been  nursed  by  the  composition  of  his  Meis- 
ter,  which  has  not  a  few  analogies  to  the 
epos.  Then  his  Reynard  ike  Fox  gave  its 
discipline,  initiating  him  into  the  scope  and 
soul  of  the  hexameter,  especially  when  talk- 
ing in  German.  At  any  rate  there  bubbles 
up  from  depths  hitherto  unseen  his  epical 
mood  which  asserts  itself  for  several  years. 
We  have  already  noticed  that  his  ballads  are 
dominantly  epical  in  their  treatment,  while 
Schiller's  manner  is  dramatic.  The  epos  re- 
quires in  some  form  or  other  an  upper  world 
or  supernal  order  playing  into  the  deeds  of 


GOETHE'S  EPICAL  MOOD.  449 

its  hero;  a  providential  over-sight  co-op- 
erates with  man's  action  to  bring  him  to  his 
heroic  goal.  We  have  already  heard  Goethe 
declaring  such  to  be  the  leading  thought  of 
his  Meister's  Apprenticeship.  Therein  the 
poet  himself  was  apprenticed  to  Providence 
in  his  earthly  discipline,  and  thus  has  real- 
ized in  himself  the  epical  consciousness  as 
never  before.  Such  is  his  present  fundamen- 
tal experience  which  his. Genius  must  throw 
out  into  art. 

Two  works  survive  which  mirror  this 
nodal  turn  in  Goethe's  life-poem — Hermann 
and  Dorothea,  a  completed  product,  and  the 
Achilleis  which  remained  a  torso  with  good 
reason,  being  a  conception  impossible  of 
birth  in  spite  of  long  and  wrenching  labor- 
pains.  Both  are  hexametral,  reflecting  Goe- 
the's classic  tendency,  though  in  different 
ways — one  being  the  way  of  success,  the  other 
of  failure.  In  a  letter  to  Voss  (1796)  Goe- 
the speaks  of  his  delight  in  passing  from  his 
novel  to  his  epos:  "I  am  very  glad  that  I 
see  this  work  (Meister)  at  last  behind  me,  as 
its  nature  is  not  purely  poetic.  Now  I  can  go 
at  something  else  not  so  lengthy  and  more 
satisfactory.  Soon  you  shall  hear  the  an- 
nouncement of  an  epical  work,"  which  had 
indeed  been  many  months  pulsating  for  ut- 
terance underneath  the  laborious  duty  of  fin- 


450         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

ishing  first  his  novel.  The  intensity  of  the 
rebound  of  his  loosened  Pegasus  is  indicated 
in  Schiller's  report  to  a  friend  at  this  time 
(September,  1796),  which  describes  Goethe's 
rush  of  creation  in  starting  his  Hermann  and 
Dorothea  as  follows:  " Every  day  for  nine 
days  in  succession  he  has  written  down  over 
one  hundred  and  fifty  hexameters!"  But 
they  all  had  to  be  carefully  revised  after- 
ward, as  they  could  hardly  have  been  me- 
tered  during  a  wild  ecstacy  of  this  sort.  With 
such  a  furious  orgasm  of  creative  energy 
his  repressed  epical  mood  crushed  in  upon 
him  and  kept  him  at  work  for  years. 

Still  this  native  paroxysmal  Muse  of  his 
must  now  be  wooed  to  a  classic  serenity,  she 
cannot  go  careening  madly  heels  over  head  as 
she  did  in  his  Frankfort  Epoch,  for  Goethe 
has  been  in  Italy.  The  deep  throb  of  emo- 
tion is  to  be  retained  and  fostered,  still  it 
must  not  become  explosive  but  plastic,  form- 
ful  not  formless.  The  poet  spoke  of  this  ep- 
ical time  to  Schiller:  "All  the  advantages 
which  I  have  turned  to  account,  I  have 
learned  from  formative  art."  Thus  the  Clas- 
sic and  the  Eomantic,  the  Greek  and  the  Ger- 
man are  blended  in  an  artistic  expression 
more  universal  than  either  taken  by  itself. 

I.  In  his  Hermann  and  Dorothea  the  poet 
produced  a  work  which  took  hold  of  the  na- 


.*• 
GOETHE'S  EPICAL  MOOD.  451 

tional  spirit  in  its  depths,  and  has  remained 
a  permanent  German  favorite.  But  it  is  a 
good  deal  more,  namely  a  world-book,  in 
which  all  peoples  of  universal  culture  will 
find  not  only  delight  but  also  an  image  of 
their  own  spiritual  evolution,  a  symbol  of 
what  has  taken  place  in  the  World's  History, 
though  reflected  in  the  humblest  idyllic  en- 
vironment. We  have  here  Goethe's  happiest 
interpenetration  of  the  old  and  the  new,  of 
the  Antique  and  the  Teutonic,  the  poetic  mar- 
riage of  the  lofty  classized  poet  with  his  own 
German  folk,  whereof  Christiane  will  rise  up 
as  representing  his  poem  and  himself  in  the 
living  deed.  The  title  of  the  book  is  un- 
doubtedly Goethe's  own  thought  and  pur- 
pose; what  does  it  mean?  The  name  of  the 
woman  is  Greek,  and  she  comes  from  the  out- 
side as  if  she  mighLbe  an  emigrating  Helen; 
the  name  of  the  man  is  Teutonic,  yea  of  a 
primeval  Teutonic  hero,  who  in  the  hoary 
aforetime  resisted  the  inbreaking  Roman 
and  his  classic  world.  Now  behold  their  love 
and  marriage,  Hermann  and  Dorothea,  a  kind 
of  foreshow  of  the  later  nuptials  of  Faust 
and  Helen.  Such  suggestiveness  lurks  al- 
ready in  the  title,  double  yet  united,  which 
indeed  preludes  the  deepest  fact  of  the  poem. 
On  the  other  hand  comes  streaming  down 
into  this  small  rural  community  the  mightiest 


452          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

event  of  the  age,  indeed  of  modern  Euro- 
pean history,  the  French  Revolution.  Goe- 
the says  of  himself:  "I  have  aspired  to  re- 
flect from  a  little  mirror  the  great  movements 
and  mutations  taking  place  on  the  world's 
stage. "  Here,  then,  we  catch  a  glimpse  of 
his  epical  treatment;  an  upper  movement 
plays  down  into  the  petty  village,  nothing 
less  than  the  World's  History,  which  deter- 
mines the  present  destiny  of  the  hero  and 
heroine.  No  Greek  or  other  mythical  instru- 
mentality is  employed,  but  the  time's  su- 
preme reality  is  taken  in  its  own  historic 
form  and  value,  voiced  of  course  by  individ- 
uals of  the  poem.  So  the  greatest  will  image 
itself  in  the  least  with  the  full  fresh  particu- 
larity of  poetry.  Hence  we  may  well  name 
the  work  an  idyllic  epos. 

Phileros  is  of  course. present — he  cannot 
bo  left  out  of  any  work  which  pulses  from 
Goethe 's  heart ;  the  action  pivots  on  an  affair 
of  love,  and  the  two  leading  characters  are 
lovers,  whose  happy  end  is  marriage.  But 
strangely,  our  Phileros  has  turned  over  a 
new  leaf  of  his  life  and  literature :  he  has  be- 
come deeply,  sympathetically  institutional. 
The  State,  the  Church,  and  especially  the 
Family,  are  all  represented  in  their  immedi- 
ate positive  reality  without  a  breath  of  pro- 
test ;  indeed,  if  there  be  any  criticism  in  this 


GOETHE'S  EPICAL  MOOD.  453 

regard,  one  will  feel  that  the  poem  has  too 
little  social  conflict;  only  in  the  far-off  hori- 
zon glimmers  the  great  world-historical  col- 
lision of  the  age  which  has  sent  its  line  of 
victims  into  the  small  village,  and  thus 
stirred  its  emotional  life.  The  whole  action 
runs  right  contrary  to  Goethe 's  domestic  con- 
duct on  its  institutional  side,  and  does  not 
tally  with  much  that  he  has  set  forth  in  his 
antecedent  novel.  What  means  the  change? 
From  this  viewpoint,  Goethe's  Hermann  and 
Dorothea  is  one  of  his  literary  confessions 
in  which  he  writes  down  his  repentance.  He 
has  now  had  for  some  years  a  family,  but  an 
uninstitutional  family,  and  bitter  has  been 
his  experience.  In  one  sense  he,  as  minister 
of  State,  has  been  above  the  law,  and  he  has 
not  been  directly  haled  before  its  tribunal  to 
answer  for  his  violation.  Still  he  has  been 
personally  condemned,  and  his  family  damned 
to  social  outlawry.  Thus  he  has  taken  a  cru- 
cial lesson  in  the  significance  of  institutions, 
especially  of  the  one  which  he  has  openly  de- 
fied. Hence  we  cannot  help  feeling  some  sur- 
prise at  the  deep  and  strong  institutional 
emotion  which  throbs  everywhere  through 
this  poem,  and  makes  it  popular  in  the  best 
sense,  for  the  people  are  wedcled  to  their  in- 
stitutions, if  they  have  any  love  at  all.  So 
we  may  well  see  in  this  work  Goethe  again 


454         GOETHE1 8  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

at  his  confessional,  as  he  sets  forth  in  his 
poetic  art  a  stage  of  his  long  penitential  jour- 
ney of  life,  which  results  from  an  intense 
heart-felt  experience  of  his  own  transgres- 
sion. 

Like  all  of  Goethe's  highest  works  his  Her- 
mann and  Dorothea  has  been  prolific  in  the 
World's  Literature.  Its  most  famous  child 
is  doubtless  our  American  Longfellow's 
Evangeline,  also  hexametral,  idyllic,  and  a 
love-story  which  has  been  fully  as  popular  as 
Goethe 's  and  which  has  had  a  great  influence 
upon  English  verse.  Still  there  is  a  wide  dif- 
ference between  the  two  productions;  Her- 
mann and  Dorothea  is  far  more  profoundly 
motived  than  Evangeline  which  is  an  ideal 
school-girl's  poem,  such  designation  hinting 
both  its  excellence  and  its  limitation.  In  Ger- 
many Voss'  Luise,  which  antedated  Goe- 
the's work,  was  formerly  much  compared 
with  it  and  sometimes  preferred  to  it ;  but  to- 
day, according  to  the  critics,  Luise  has  quite 
fallen  aback,  while  Evangeline  more  than 
holds  its  own  still;  and  aside  from  its  purely 
poetic  value  it  has  been  the  main  factor  in 
calling  up  the  great  metrical  fight  over  the 
hexameter  in  English — the  hottest  and  most 
lasting  contest  in  the  history  of  prosody,  and 
it  is  by  no  means  yet  over.  The  battle  is  really 
for  the  liberty  of  versifying  in  accord  with 


GOETHE'S  EPICAL  MOotf'.  455 

the  new  time  and  new  poetry.  Whitman  broke 
loose  from  the  old  metrical  fetters,  and  cre- 
ated an  epoch  in  spite  of  his  many  sins  and 
follies.  It  should  never  be  forgotten  that  the 
English  hexameter,  along  with  the  German, 
is  not  the  Greek  or  Latin ;  it  is  a  free-moving 
measure  of  six  feet,  each  foot  having  two  or 
three  syllables.  Thus  it  has  a  marvelous  in- 
ner freedom  of  movement  within  its  six  re- 
current beats.  Instead  of  being  ancient  it  is 
really  the  most  modern  of  true  poetic  meas- 
ures, and,  as  we  believe,  has  a  future.  At 
present  our  versifiers  seem  bent  upon  break- 
ing away  from  all  fixed  recurrence  of  the 
beat,  and  to  revel  in  irregular  rhythms, 
rhymed  and  unrhymed.  This  choral  ten- 
dency has  its  undoubted  place  in  prosody; 
still  it  is  only  a  part  of  the  great  totality  of 
versified  utterance.  In  like  manner  the  ac- 
cented hexameter  in  Teutonic  tongues  has 
asserted  its  place,  being  peculiarly  adapted 
to  the  idyllic  epos.  To  have  revealed  this 
fact  is  the  merit  of  Goethe's  work,  without 
which  Evangeline  would  never  have  been 
written.  To  be  sure  Goethe  generously  ac- 
knowledged that  he  got  his  hint  from  Yoss. 
If  Tennyson  had  been  master  of  the  English 
hexameter,  and  had  employed  it  for  his 
' ' Idyls  of  the  King,"  his  work  might  have 
rivaled  Goethe  and  Longfellow  in  the  same 


456         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

field.  But  Tennyson's  metrical  ear  was  very 
narrow  in  its  range,  though  exquisitely  re- 
fined as  far  as  it  went. 

It  may  be  added  that  Hermann  and  Doro- 
thea exhibits  the  modern  heroism  of  every- 
day life;  it  heroizes  the  unheroic  through 
humble  service.  A  non-aristocratic  poem  by 
the  aristocratic  Goethe  (though  he  resents 
the  epithet),  it  deals  with  the  simple  burgher- 
life  of  a  small  village,  which  accepts  itself  as 
transmitted  from  the  indefinite  past,  and  in- 
quires not  after  its  origin.  How  different  an 
American  town  on  the  frontier,  which  is  the 
product  of  a  great  migration  and  knows 
whence  it  came!  Active  community-builders 
are  its  people,  not  merely  the  passive  recipi- 
ents of  inherited  forms ;  it  has  often  a  French 
Revolution  going  on  inside  itself,  not  out- 
side. And  its  life  always  connects  with  the 
State  and  the  Nation,  whereof  in  Goethe  we 
hear  very  little,  except  that  the  youth  Her- 
mann at  the  close  declares  his  willingness 
to  fight  for  his  fatherland  and  home.  Quite 
a  burst  of  patriotism  for  unpatriotic  Goe- 
the !  Still  the  true  heroic  character  of  the 
poem  is  not  the  man  but  the  woman — yes, 
again  the  woman. 

II.  The  second  significant  product  of  Goe- 
the 's  epical  mood  is  the  AchUleis  whose  hero 
belongs  to  antiquity  and  specially  to  Homer. 


GOETHE'S  EPICAL  MOOD.  457 

The  poet  has  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
"the  epos,  as  a  form  of  poetry,  is  the  one 
most  suited  to  my  years,  and  harmonizes  best 
with  my  present  inclination  as  well  as  my 
circumstances. "  No  longer  young,  not  yet 
old,  he  is  turning  toward  his  fiftieth  year, 
which  he  deems  just  the  epical  time  of  life. 
His  idyllic  epos  of  Hermann  and  Dorothea 
has  had  a  wonderful  success,  which  has 
spurred  him  to  try  his  hand  at  the  loftier 
heroic  epos  in  a  kind  of  rivalry  with  the  old 
Hellenic  bard,  whose  hero  Achilles  he  will 
present  in  a  new  poem  which  lies  between  the 
Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  and  in  a  manner  con- 
nects them  together.  Thus  he  writes  to  Schil- 
ler hinting  his  plans:  "I  am  investigating 
whether  still  another  epic  poem  is  not  en- 
sconced between  the  death  of  Hector  (Iliad) 
and  the  departure  of  the  Greeks  for  home" 
(Odyssey).  There  is  no  doubt  that  Schiller 
sees  the  danger  of  such  an  attempt  on  the 
part  of  the  German  poet,  and  in  his  answer 
gently  warns  him  ' '  against  quitting  his  native 
soil,  and  running  counter  to  his  own  time." 
Do  not  try  to  go  back  thousands  of  years  and 
be  an  old  Greek  poet — you  will  surely  fail. 
"Your  beautiful  call  is  to  be  a  citizen  of  both 
poetic  worlds,"  ancient  and  modern,  mould- 
ing your  German  spirit  into  a  classic  form. 
This  sound  advice  Goethe  did  not  heed;  if 


458         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

not  a  Homer,  he  would  still  be  a  Homerid,  as 
he  hints.  So  he  sets  to  work,  and  in  1799  the 
first  canto  gets  done,  but  he  cannot  budge 
the  work  further.  The  chief  difficulty  lies  in 
Homer's  Upper  World  of  the  Gods,  in  whom 
Goethe  does  not  believe,  and  who,  therefore, 
become  subjective  playthings  or  external  ma- 
chinery of  the  poem.  Thus  the  supreme  ep- 
ical element  of  an  over-ruling  divine  order 
simply  vanishes.  For  instance  the  interven- 
tion of  the  Goddess  Aphrodite  turns  to  a  fan- 
ciful sport  of  love;  she  is  no  longer  truly 
mythical  but  paramythical  —  a  character 
which  suits  Goethe's  Roman  Elegies  but  not 
the  Homeric  epos. 

Still  our  Phileros  could  not  help  showing 
his  deepest  nature  in  this  far-off  theme  of 
hoary  antiquity.  The  Greek  hero  Achilles 
had  to  fall  in  love  with  the  Trojan  maiden 
Polyxena,  and  thereby  in  some  way  meet  his 
.fate.  This  cataclysm  was  to  happen  in  later 
cantos  which  were  never  written.  The  sole 
surviving  torso  has  its  merit,  but  also  its  ad- 
monition. Goethe  worried  over  the  subject 
a  good  deal,  having  grown  very  fond  of  it  as 
well  as  ambitious  to  be  "the  last  Homerid"; 
but  the  inherent  dissonance  of  the  theme  kept 
getting  louder  in  his  soul,  till  he  threw  the 
whole  torment  overboard,  and  with  it  seem- 
ingly went  all  desire  of  writing  any  more 


. 
GOETHE'S  REVERSION  TO  THE  DRAMA.       459 

epic  poetry.  Thus  his  present  mood  came  to 
an  end,  after  haunting  him  for  some  years, 
and  finding  expression  in  one  supreme 
achievement. 

Accordingly  Goethe  in  his  Achilleis  runs 
counter  to  his  Genius  which  demands  a  con- 
tent immediately  experienced  by  him,  even  if 
he  should  clothe  it  in  antique  form,  as  he  does 
his  Iphigenia.  He  is  not  to  abjure  his  own 
consciousness  and  that  of  his  time  to  become 
old  Homer,  who  can  in  truth  pray  to  Apollo, 
but  Goethe  cannot.  Still  he  has  acquired  one 
experience  in  this  broken-off  poem:  he  has 
pushed  his  classicism  beyond  itself  and  has 
begun  to  feel  its  limitation.  But  he  is  not 
done  with  it  yet. 


IV. 

Goethe's  Reversion  to  the  Drama. 

Noteworthy  is  the  fact  that  Goethe's  dra- 
matic bent  began  to  stir  in  him  once  more, 
after  his  epical  mood  had  started  to  wane. 
This  was  a  reversion  to  one  of  his  earliest 
tendencies  reaching  back  to  Leipzig  and  to  his 
Frankfort  time.  Later  in  Italy  his  poetic 
trend  again  ran  to  the  drama,  as  we  see  by 
the  composition  of  his  Trilogy  already  con- 
sidered. But  after  exercising  his  Genius 


460         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

some  ten  years  in  the  novelistic,  lyrical  and 
epical  spheres,  he  returns  to  his  previous 
dramatic  form  of  expression.  Then  there  is 
no  doubt  that  the  great  success  of  Schiller's 
dramas,  to  which  he  had  largely  contributed, 
awakened  in  him  a  fresh  ambition  to  exert  his 
skill  and  experience  in  the  same  field.  Be- 
sides, we  are  to  remember  that  Goethe  never 
could  content  himself  for  any  great  length  of 
time  with  one  kind  of  literary  expression. 
His  Genius  required  the  whole  realm  of  let- 
ters in  its  various  channels  to  utter  his  uni- 
versality. This  is  indeed  the  chief  interest 
of  his  life,  which,  taken  as  a  whole  was  an 
ever-flowing  reservoir  of  literary  forms,  not 
to  speak  of  his  other  manifold  activities,  sci- 
entific, social,  political,  artistic.  To  be  sure 
in  literature  alone  lay  the  deepest  and  most 
abiding  strain  of  his  spiritual  being. 

Accordingly  we  are  now  to  witness  Goe- 
the in  his  third  great  upburst  of  dramatic 
authorship.  The  first  may  be  represented 
by  his  Gotz  Von  Berlichingen,  omitting  other 
less  considerable  efforts  before  it  and  after 
it  in  the  Frankfort  Epoch.  The  second 
notable  upburst  took  place  a  dozen  years  and 
more  afterwards,  the  Italian  Trilogy  we  may 
call  it  as  it  shows  the  influence  of  classic 
Italy.  But  now  after  another  long  spell  of 
dramatic  quiescence  the  Goethe-Schiller  Ep- 


GOETHE'S  REVERSION  TO  THE  DRAMA.       461 

och  of  Goethe's  productivity  in  the  field  of  the 
drama  breaks  out  afresh  and  lasts  several 
years.  The  first  distinct  designation  of  the 
new  resurgence  in  him  may  perhaps  be 
caught  from  the  brief  jotting  in  his  diary  un- 
der the  date  of  December  6,  1799 :  The  Na- 
tural Daughter.  Such  is  the  name  of  the 
new  play  which  he  is  incited  to  plan  and  com- 
pose from  reading  a  book  of  French  memoirs 
which  recounts  the  troubles  of  an  illegitimate 
daughter  of  the  princely  house  of  Bourbon- 
Conti  of  France.  It  should  be  added  that  be- 
fore this  date  in  the  Correspondence  between 
Schiller  and  Goethe  we  may  glimpse  many  a 
little  throb  of  the  rising  dramatic  impulse  in 
the  poet. 

The  above-mentioned  three  epochal  stages 
in  the  evolution  of  Goethe's  dramatic  work 
can  be  specially  characterized  as  follows :  the 
first  is  his  immediate,  native,  Teutonic  over- 
flow of  Titanism  (Gotz) ;  the  second  shows  his 
subdued,  formful,  classic  spirit  (Tasso) ;  the 
third  on  the  whole  will  take  up  both  his  pre- 
vious tendencies  and  will  culminate  in  two 
dramas,  one  of  which  is  Classic  in  form  (The 
Natural  Daughter),  and  the  other  is  Teutonic 
and  Romantic  (The  First  Part  of  Faust). 
Both  these  plays  belong  to  the  present  Goe- 
the-Schiller Epoch,  and  reveal  its  double 
character  throughout,  especially  as  regards 


462          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

Goethe,  though  Schiller  had  in  himself  the 
same  twof oldness  of  literary  production.  Ac- 
cordingly we  shall  concentrate  attention  up- 
on these  two  dramas  as  manifesting  the  in- 
herent nature  of  this  Epoch,  and  bringing 
it  to  a  conclusion. 

I.  The  most  obvious  fact  of  The  Natural 
Daughter,  is  the  title,  and  its  direct  connec- 
tion with  one  of  the  deepest-searching  expe- 
riences of  Goethe's  whole  life  which  may  be 
summed  up  in  the  one  brief  sentence :  he  had 
a  natural  son.  This  son  was  his  only  surviv- 
ing child,  the  source  of  a  torturing  paternal 
solicitude  for  a  number  of  reasons,  and  the 
object  of  his  most  intense  love.  It  is  no  won- 
der then  that  when  he  read  these  memoirs  of 
an  outlawed  child  he  at  once  called  up  his 
own  boy  then  some  ten  years  old,  also  ille- 
gally born  and  socially  tabooed  in  spite  of  the 
position  and  fame  of  the  father.  Such  must 
have  been  the  primary  fact  which  led  to  the 
selection  of  this  theme  by  Goethe  who  could 
write  nothing  except  what  he  had  taken  out 
of  the  book  of  his  personal  experience.  But 
why  did  he  fling  into  the  face  of  his  public 
such  an  unsavory  title  of  his  play?  It  was 
a  challenge  to  the  world ;  from  much  persecu- 
tion or  rather  punishment  for  his  deed,  he 
had  grown  reckless,  yea  vengeful  in  word 
and  attitude.  He  might  have  labeled  his 


.*• 
GOETHE'S  REVERSION  TO  THE  DRAMA.       463 

drama  Eugenia,  after  the  beautiful  name  of 
the  heroine;  and  so  he  did  often  designate  it 
in  his  journals  and  letters  with  a  peculiar 
fondness.  But  he  would  not  flinch  before 
society's  gossipy  clamor,  and  so  he  still  fur- 
ther called  down  the  penalty  of  his  conduct 
upon  his  production  in  whose  very  forehead 
he  branded  the  scarlet  stigma  of  his  life's 
supremely  tragic  deed,  with  a  strangely  fate- 
ful cynicism. 

Such  was  the  ominous  title  which  every- 
body read  on  the  play-bill,  read  doubly  and 
could  not  help  so  reading  it.  This  undercur- 
rent of  satirical  scandal  provoked  by  the 
name  was  voiced  by  Herder  who  in  a  conver- 
sation with  Goethe  praised  the  piece  but  sud- 
denly blurted  out:  "I  like  your  Natural 
Daughter  better  than  your  natural  son. ' 9  The 
result  was  an  immediate  and  permanent  dis- 
solution of  their  long  friendship.  Verily  tact 
was  not  a  virtue  of  the  Herderian  tongue,  be 
it  the  husband's  or  the  wife's.  Goethe  has 
not  mentioned  the  demonic  taunt,  but  he  has 
recorded  "the  terrific  feeling  which  seized 
me ;  I  stared  at  the  man,  but  said  nothing ;  the 
many  years  of  our  intimate  life  terrified  me 
in  this  dreadful  symbol.  So  we  separated 
and  I  never  saw  him  afterwards."  But  Her- 
der only  spoke  out  what  everybody  was  think- 
ing or  privately  whispering  in  mockery ;  Goe- 


464         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

the  must  have  known  all  this,  and  he  indi- 
cates that  Herder's  act  was  merely  " sym- 
bolic" of  what  was  universally  taking  place. 
Still  he  was  steeled  to  the  last  point  of  pub- 
lic defiance ;  even  the  name  of  his  illegitimate 
heroine,  Eugenia  (which  means  the  well- 
born), seems  to  have  been  chosen  and  doted 
upon  in  a  spirit  of  malicious  irony  against 
Weimar,  Germany,  Europe,  yes  against  the 
future.  Such  then  was  Herder's  bodeful 
word  which  shook  Goethe  like  the  sudden 
crack  of  Doom. 

Now  let  us  glance  in  the  other  direction 
and  listen  to  what  Goethe  himself  says  about 
his  purpose  in  composing  the  present  drama : 
"My  plan  was  to  make  a  vessel  into  which  I 
could  pour  all  that  I  had  written  and  thought 
concerning  the  French  Revolution  and  its 
consequences  with  fitting  earnestness. ' '  Thus 
his  intention  was  to  produce  a  grand  world- 
drama  having  as  its  content  the  mighty  his- 
toric event  of  his  age.  The  whole  was  to  be 
a  Trilogy  in  the  old  Greek  sense  with  one 
leading  character  running  through  the  three 
parts.  Thus  the  illegitimate  scion  of  a  noble 
stock  was  somehow  to  be  elevated  into  the 
heroic  bearer  of  the  French  Revolution.  Cer- 
tainly a  daring,  indeed  defiant  conception  it 
is,  which  we  have  to  see  springing  out  of  his 
own  immediate  personal  experience.  But 


GOETHE'S  REVERSION  TO  THE  DRAMA.       465 

such  a  plan  could  not  be  carried  out ;  only  one 
part  of  the  Trilogy  was  ever  completed,  and 
that  was  very  incomplete  though  done  in  five 
acts.  Goethe  had  little  historic  sense;  re- 
peatedly he  sneers  at  the  World's  History  in 
talk  and  writ.  Again  he  re-enacted  the  de- 
fects of  his  Egmont  as  an  historic  play. 

The  drama  has  its  place  in  the  life-poem  of 
Goethe  since  it  reflects  powerfully  the  fa- 
ther's relation  to  his  natural  son  who  is  now 
an  adolescent  requiring  a  right  education  un- 
usually difficult  under  the  circumstances,  and 
who  is  getting  fully  conscious  of  a  painful  so- 
cial situation.  What  is  to  become  of  the  boy? 
The  parental  love  and  the  gnawing  anxiety 
we  can  catch  in  the  play  from  the  words  of 
the  parental  Duke,  and  we  often  have  to  think 
of  the  son  when  we  hear  the  aspirations  of 
the  like-conditioned  daughter.  What  a  heart- 
throbbing  eagerness  on  her  part  to  become 
legitimate !  In  such  passages  the  poet,  draw- 
ing from  the  deepest  wells  of  his  direct  pres- 
ent experience  is  at  his  best.  But  there  is  a 
totally  different  strand  in  the  work ;  the  stiff 
formal,  icy  Goethe  weaves  also  his  part  into 
the  action.  From  this  element  sprang  the 
famous  dictum  of  a  contemporary  critic,  Hu- 
ber,  who  labeled  the  work  "marble-smooth 
and  marble-cold ' ' —  a  rubric  which  has  clung 
to  it  till  today.  But  only  half-true  is  the 


466         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

4 

phrase,  since  Goethe's  personal  portion  glows 
like  a  white-hot  furnace,  even  if  the  courtly 
part  is  cold  and  hard  as  a  statue.  So  the 
poem  has  in  its  style  and  spirit  a  profound 
dualism;  Goethe's  classicism  may  be  noted 
here  in  its  two  extremes,  on  the  one  hand 
lapsing  to  mere  external  pompous  statuesque- 
ness,  or  on  the  other  hand  filled  with  his 
most  passionate  heart-beats. 

Thus  again  we  have  to  trace  here  one  of 
Goethe's  literary  confessions,  and  to  mark 
the  inherent  bent  of  his  Genius  in  the  fact 
that  when  intending  to  set  forth  the  World's 
History  in  one  of  its  supreme  collisions,  he 
drops  back  into  his  domestic  conflict  as  being 
just  then  his  experience  most  urgent  for  ut- 
terance. It  should  be  noted  that  Goethe  dur- 
ing the  composition  of  this  drama  fell  very 
ill,  so  that  for  a  time  he  lay  face  to  face  with 
death,  at  whose  appearance  he  could  not  help 
questioning  Fate  as  his  boy  stood  at  his  bed- 
side with  anxious  sobs:  "If  I  die,  what  is 
to  become  of  thee,  my  son?"  So  when  we 
enter  into  the  heart-beat  of  this  work,  we  find 
a  seething  undercurrent  of  apprehension 
which  surges  out  of  his  own  tragic  deed,  a 
dread  presentiment  of  what  is  to  happen  to 
his  child  as  he  forefeels  into  what  kind  of  a 
man  such  a  youth  is  to  unfold,  who  all  his  life 
has  been  and  is  still  to  be  the  victim  of  a 


.*• 
GOETHE'S  REVERSION  TO  THE  DRAMA.       467 

guilt  not  his  own.  Have  we  not  the  right  to 
imagine  that  Goethe  at  such  a  solemn  hour 
again  heard  that  awful  Hymn  of  the  Parcas 
which  he  had  sung  out  of  his  own  soul  more 
than  ten  years  before  and  which  echoes 
through  all  his  creative  work  like  the  chant 
of  doom,  and  which  we  may  name  his  Dies 
ira  bursting  up  into  his  life-poem  along  its 
entire  course. 

Still  Goethe  maintains  his  defiant  negative 
attitude,  refusing  to  comply  with  the  behest 
of  the  social  order.  Hence  he  will  evolve  in 
time  his  Mephistopheles,  really  his  own 
fiend,  of  whom  we  catch  psychical  glimpses 
in  this  Natural  Daughter,  already  unfolding 
1  <  the  Spirit  that  denies. " 

Two  other  dramatic  attempts  in  classic 
form  during  this  time  can  only  be  noted  in 
passing.  The  Greek  title  Palaeophron  and 
Neoterpe  indicates  a  bright  brief  skit.  Goe- 
the also  wrought  at  his  classic  drama  called 
Helena,  but  could  not  now  finish  it;  some  of 
it  was  long  afterwards  included  in  The  Sec- 
ond Part  of  Faust.  But  the  crowning  litera  ry 
fact  of  the  present  Epoch  is  the  completion 
of  The  First  Part  of  Faust,  usually  regarded 
as  Goethe's  supreme  effort,  and  as  a  sov- 
ereign masterpiece  of  the  World's  Literature. 
To  its  consideration  we  shall  devote  a  few 
thoughts  regarding  its  place  in  his  life-poem. 


468         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

II.  The  completion  of  The  First  Part  of 
Faust  belongs  decidedly  to  the  Goethe-Schil- 
ler Decennium.  Without  the  association  of 
his  poetic  friend,  it  may  be  doubted  if  Goe- 
the had  ever  fulfilled  the  chief  task  of  his 
life  and  finished  his  greatest  work.  Already 
in  1794,  the  first  year  of  their  bond,  Schiller 
began  gently  to  nudge  Goethe  by  asking  for 
the  privilege  of  reading  the  unprinted  frag- 
ments of  Faust.  The  next  year  brought  a 
somewhat  stronger  prodding,  and  so  it  went 
on  for  the  whole  ten  years  of  their  mutual 
labor  with  increasing  urgency,  till  at  last  the 
poem  was  finished,  but  Schiller  never  saw  the 
final  stroke  of  its  completion. 

As  already  indicated  (see  preceding  p.  167) 
the  first  form  of  the  written  Faust  goes  back 
to  the  Frankfort  Epoch  of  the  poet's  Titan- 
ism.  Then  doubtless  arose  the  Urfaust  so- 
called,  or  the  primordial  Faust,  the  manu- 
script of  which  was  brought  to  light  as  late  as 
1887,  more  than  a  century  after  its  composi- 
tion. Goethe  had  already  published  in  1790 
his  Faust  a  Fragment,  omitting  important 
portions  which  already  existed.  Finally  in 
1808  the  completed  First  Part  reached  publi- 
cation which  had  been  delayed  quite  two 
years  on  account  of  the  unsettled  condition 
of  Germany. 

Of   the    two    leading   strands   which    run 


GOETHE'S  REVERSION  TO  THE  DRAMA.       469 

through  this  Goethe-Schiller  Epoch,  Faust 
represents  most  emphatically  in  its  First 
Part  the  Northern,  the  Teutonic,  the  Roman- 
tic, in  contrast  with  the  Southern  and  Clas- 
sic. Thus  it  indicates  a  considerable  change 
in  the  poet's  artistic  consciousness.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  to  make  this  transition  pro- 
duced in  him  a  great  repugnance;  it  seemed 
to  work  like  a  disgusting  medicine  which, 
however,  he  had  to  take  if  he  would  become 
the  whole  of  himself  and  of  his  time.  One  is 
amused  to  watch  him  making  wry  faces  (in 
his  Correspondence)  as  he  looks  at  his  task. 
He  heaps  upon  his  Faust  all  sorts  of  vituper- 
ative epithets:  it  is  "a  barbaric  composi- 
tion, "  the  very  opposite  of  beautiful  plastic 
classicism;  it  is  the  native  product  of  the 
foggy  North  as  distinguished  from  the  sunny 
South,  of  wild  Teutonic  fantasy  over  against 
serene  Hellenic  repose.  He  bemocks  it  as  a 
hybrid  monstrosity,  naming  it  "a  tragele- 
phus,"  that  is  a  goat-deer,  for  Goethe  in- 
tended to  unite  in  it  his  two  life-lines  of  art, 
the  Teutonic  and  the  Classic.  So -he  spurts 
venom  at  his  own  greatest  creation,  of  which 
poison  he  had  to  relieve  himself  before  going 
to  work. 

It  is  evident  that  a  large  portion  of  the  poem 
had  already  been  written,  but  that  a  huge 
chasm  gaped  in  it  which  Goethe  had  never 


470         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

been  able  to  fill  up.  Seemingly  it  was  the 
sight  of  this  chasm  which  would  unfailingly 
bring  on  a  paroxysm  of  damnation.  It  must 
have  been  to  him  a  kind  of  Hell-pit  through 
which  he  had  to  pass  and  meet  old  Splay-foot 
face  to  face  in  furious  tussle.  Moreover  it 
could  only  have  been  a  direct  personal  expe- 
rience, else  he  would  never,  according  to  his 
own  repeated  statements,  have  poetized  it, 
or  have  heard  the  call  of  the  Muse.  So  with 
many  foul  names  and  curses  and  blasphe- 
mies, he  has  to  tackle  again  Mephistopheles, 
the  old  black  Teutonic  Devil  himself  whom 
he  once  deemed  to  have  banned  forever  from 
his  world  of  classic  sunshine.  Yea,  his  task, 
as  he  peers  into  that  yawning  abyss  of 
Tophet,  which  opens  murky  and  bridgeless  in 
the  very  heart  of  his  book,  appears  desperate 
and  unfathomable  by  mortal  vision.  Hence, 
with  maledictions  upon  his  supreme  poetic 
vocation,  he  rebounds  again  and  again,  only 
to  be  scourged  back  to  his  work  by  the  Powers 
presiding  over  his  destiny. 

But  what  then  is  this  chasm  from  which 
the  poet  shrank  in  awe  and  execration  for 
more  than  thirty  years !  It  can  be  distinctly 
seen  by  the  reader  who  compares  the  three 
redactions  of  Faust.  The  first  of  them 
belongs  to  the  Frankfort  Epoch  and  is 
the  Urfaust,  usually  dated  1774-1775;  the 


if 

GOETHE'S  REVERSION  TO  THE  DRAMA.       471 

second  is  the  Fragment  of  1790;  these 
two  incomplete  stages  show  one  great 
omission  when  compared  with  the  com- 
pleted First  Part  of  1808.  This  hiatus  lies 
between  lines  253  and  1415 ;  that  is,  1162  lines 
were  added  in  one  long  passage  of  the  com- 
pleted edition,  making  more  than  one-fourth 
of  the  total  poem  (the  figures  are  taken  from 
Loeper's  accurate  count).  There  are  other 
omissions,  some  small  and  some  large;  but 
they  are  of  little  significance  alongside  of  this 
one  colossal  omission  which  makes  the  Sty- 
gian demon-haunted  chasm  yawning  before 
Goethe  during  this  entire  Decennium.  We 
may  well  suppose  that  this  literally  infernal 
job,  imposed  upon  the  poet  by  the  imperial 
edict  of  his  deepest  Genius  was  what  made 
him  think  at  times  of  fleeing  again  to  Italy 
with  its  bright  upper  realm  in  order  to  es- 
cape from  the  gloomy  nether  world  of  Teu- 
tonic diablery. 

Now  if  we  peer  into  this  huge  dark  chasm 
and  seek  to  explore  by  the  light  of  the  com- 
pleted First  Part  what  monstrous  megathe- 
rium lies  hidden  there,  we  find  that  it  is  noth- 
ing else  but  the  modern  Devil  himself  in  his 
various  stages  of  growth.  We  shall  name  it 
the  evolution  of  Mephistopheles  from  the  pri- 
mordial No  of  Faust  and  of  the  age,  through 
many  grades  of  metamorphosis  represented 


472         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

by  the  little  poodle,  the  huge  animals,  the 
traveling1  scholastic  "the  spirit  that  always 
denies, "  till  we  listen  to  the  diabolic  person- 
ality bargaining  with  Faust  for  the  sale  of 
his  immortal  soul.  Such  is  the  germinal  cen- 
ter of  the  whole  poem,  of  both  its  Parts,  First 
and  Second.  This,  too,  was  the  core  of  the 
poet's  grand  struggle  of  creation,  the  evolu- 
tion which  made  him  "sweat  terribly"  for  so 
many  years.  Mark,  then,  the  line  of  evolving 
shapes  of  destruction  from  Faust's  primal 
negation  till  his  contract  with  Satan  signed 
in  his  own  blood,  when  he  is  ready  to  go  forth 
with  his  new  companion  "to  see  both  worlds, 
the  great  and  the  little "  (we  may  be  permit- 
ted here  to  refer  the  reader  who  wishes  to 
trace  step  by  step  this  evolution  of  Mephis- 
topheles,  to  our  Commentary  on  Goethe's 
Faust,  Part  First). 

There  remains  the  question  concerning 
the  literary  development  which  trained  Goe- 
the to  complete  his  work  during  this  present 
Epoch.  Already  we  may  observe  him  deal- 
ing with  his  Romantic  heritage  in  Meister's 
Apprenticeship,  especially  in  the  latter  por- 
tion. But  more  decisively  he  began  to  poet- 
ize the  Teutonic  spirit  in  his  ballads  which 
culminate  in  1797,  the  so-called  ballad-year; 
the  Northern  mythus  he  likewise  employed  in 
various  ways.  His  Faust  is  a  German  fable, 


.$• 
GOETHE'S  REVERSION  TO  THE  DRAMA.   473 

even  if  it  strikes  its  early  roots  far  back  in 
the  ages.  Along  with  his  ballads  in  1797  we 
see  him  tackling  his  task  as  it  were  on  the 
outside  by  writing  the  Prelude  and  the  Pro- 
logue to  his  Faust  drama.  He  veers  off  for 
a  while  to  composing  the  more  congenial  clas- 
sic portion,  called  the  Helena,  but  he  finds 
that  he  must  drop  it  and  take  up  the  more 
imperative  problem,  which  is  his  poetic  fight 
with  the  Devil.  Another  deflection  toward 
the  classic  side  was  his  Natural  Daughter, 
which  he  could  not  finish  as  a  Trilogy,  but 
whose  disciplining  composition  drove  him  to 
complete  his  evolution  of  Mephistopheles. 
Thus  amid  many  reactions  and  divagations 
he  at  last  brings  his  infernal  labor  to  its  con- 
clusion. 

The  deepest  fact  of  the  poet's  experience 
during  these  years,  is  that  he  evolved  Mephis- 
topheles in  himself,  in  his  own  life.  Through 
his  defiance  of  the  social  order,  he  became  an 
embodied  negative ;  he  echoed  himself  in  the 
line  "I  am  the  spirit  that  always  denies. " 
His  mood  turned  Mephistophelean,  as  we 
may  often  note  in  the  Natural  Daughter 
which  is  indeed  a  kind  of  overture  to  his  gen- 
eration of  Mephistopheles,  indicating  the  true 
origin  of  the  fiend  to  lie  in  Goethe's  domestic 
violation.  Thus  his  own  negative  deed  has 
begotten  his  devil  armed  with  the  torments 


474         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

of  Hell.  The  culmination  is  reached  in  the 
famous  curse  of  Faust  which  embraces  in  its 
sweep  the  entire  social  world,  including  spe- 
cially "wife  and  child, "  the  dearest  objects 
which  had  caused  the  bitterest  woes,  chiefly 
through  his  own  transgression. 

Such  is  the  personal  experience  which  lies 
behind  the  poet's  greatest  and  most  compell- 
ing character.  Undoubtedly  the  denial  of 
Mephistopheles  was  also  intellectual  and  phil- 
osophic; it  took  up  the  time's  speculative 
negation  emanating  in  Germany  particularly 
from  Kant,  whom  Goethe  studied.  But  Faust 
is  also  a  confession  of  the  poet,  yea  in  a  sense 
is  the  confession  of  the  age  which  acknowl- 
edges its  devil,  and  thus  gets  to  know  itself 
better.  The  negative  Eighteenth  Century, 
increasingly  negative  in  its  thought  from 
Locke  to  Kant,  and  finally  manifesting  its 
practical  negation  of  the  whole  transmitted 
world  of  institutions  in  the  catastrophic 
French  Revolution,  has  found  its  deepest  and 
mightiest  poetic  voice  in  the  First  Part  of 
Faust,  especially  in  this  central  portion  which 
we  call  the  evolution  of  Mephistopheles.  Now 
Goethe  in  his  anti-institutional  deed  at  Wei- 
mar had  personally  gone  through  the  same 
evolution,  and  thus  by  means  of  his  own  ex- 
perience was  enabled  to  become  the  poet  of 
his  age. 


GOETHE'S  REVERSION  TO  THE  DRAMA.       475 

Still  Goethe  does  not  perish  of  his  own 
curse,  though  it  whirls  back  mightily  upon 
himself,  and  serves  up  to  him  his  own  nega- 
tion. So  we  may  likewise  read  in  this  poem 
the  penalty  of  the  damning  deed  uttered  in 
the  most  crushing  words.  But  just  this  ut- 
terance is  the  penitential  process  which  brings 
relief  and  atonement;  literature  is  again  the 
poet's  way  of  expiation,  and  of  rescue  from 
the  fiend.  Thus  he  not  only  for  himself  but 
for  many  an  erring  mortal  creates  a  new  sal- 
vation in  this  world-poem  of  Faust,  when  the 
old  ways  do  not  suffice.  Such  must  always 
remain  its  deepest  worth  and  significance. 

We  may  hear  this  turn  from  death  to  life, 
from  destruction  to  construction,  in  the  very 
depths  of  Faust's  universal  curse,  when  the 
song  of  the  spirits  hovers  over  him  in  sor- 
rowing chorus:  "Woe!  woe!  thou  hast  it 
destroyed,  the  beautiful  world, "  namely  of 
man's  institutional  order.  But  after  this 
painful  outcry  there  rises  quite  the  opposite 
exhortation:  "Thou  mighty  one  of  the 
Earth's  sons,  build  it  up  again  more  grandty, 
build  it  up  in  thy  bosom!"  This  hints  the 
affirmative  outcome  which  lurks  just  in 
Faust's  last  negation.  So  he  is  to  be  s^ved 
even  here  at  the  lowest  circle  of  his  Inferno, 
where  is  glimpsed  already  the  germ  of  the 
Second  Part  of  Faust.  Still  there  is  no  deny- 


476         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

ing  that  Goethe  became  the  Devil  in  order  to 
get  rid  of  the  Devil,  exorcising  him  at  last 
through  the  magic  of  his  pen,  not  merely  for 
himself  but  for  a  vast  array  of  readers. 

In  such  fashion  we  seek  to  correlate  the 
present  work,  deemed  Goethe's  supreme  po- 
etic creation,  with  his  other  works,  written 
and  even  unwritten.  Not  all  that  he  lived  has 
he  put  into  letters.  This  Faust  poem  is, 
therefore,  but  one  strain  in  Goethe's  entire 
life-song,  some  outline  of  which  we  are  here 
trying  to  limn  in  its  totality.  Hence  the 
drama  before  us  may  well  be  regarded  the 
center  of  Goethe's  whole  living  drama,  and 
of  this  center  in  turn  the  genetic  germ  is  the 
evolution  of  .Mephistopheles  into  full  activ- 
ity, yet  with  the  outlook  upon  his  subordina- 
tion. Thus  the  poem  embraces  the  universal 
process  of  man  begetting  the  negative  and 
then  overcoming  it  in  himself  and  in  the 
world.  (Whoever  wishes  a  fuller  interpre- 
tative commentary,  which  carries  out  in  de- 
tail the  view  of  the  present  author  on  Faust, 
is  referred  to  his  book  already  cited.) 


.¥• 

GOETHE  ALONE  AGAIN.  477 


CHAPTER  SIXTH. 

GOETHE   ALONE   AGAIN. 

* 

After  the  death  of  Schiller,  which  took 
place  May  9,  1805,  Goethe  felt  himself  not 
merely  alone  in  the  world,  but  severed  in 
twain.  He  had  become  so  intergrown  with 
his  friend  that  they  formed,  if  not  one  body, 
one  spirit  in  which  each  participated  through 
his  own  independent  Genius.  In  a  letter  to 
Zelter  he  writes  not  long  afterwards:  "I 
thought  to  lose  myself  and  now  I  lose  a 
friend,  and  in  him  the  half  of  my  existence. 9 ' 
Quite  undone  he  looks  out  upon  the  future: 
"Properly  I  ought  to  make  a  new  start  in 
life,  but  there  is  no  way  to  that  in  my  years. 
So  I  take  every  day  immediately  as  it  comes, 
and  do  what  is  at  hand  without  thinking  of 
the  consequences. "  Still  let  it  be  noted  that 
Goethe  himself  is  not  dead,  though  for  the 
present  stunned  quite  into  non-entity.  Give 
him  time,  and  he  will  "make  the  new  start," 
whereof  the  record  will  come  hereafter.  But 
now  his  pen  is  paralyzed,  as  he  indicates  in 
a  later  account :  "My  diary  of  that  time  is  a 
blank;  its  white  leaves  tell  my  blank  condi- 
tion. Other  accounts  show  that  I  simply  let 
my  business  conduct  me  instead  of  my  con- 


478         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

ducting  it."  Thus  he  bespeaks  his  prostra- 
tion in  several  remaining  documents. 

It  is  evident  that  Goethe  regards  the  pass- 
ing of  Schiller  as  the  turn  of  an  Epoch  in  his 
life.  Doubtless  he  is  aware,  as  he  looks  back, 
that  the  most  fruitful  season  of  his  Genius 
has  come  and  gone ;  he  knows  that  he  cannot 
find  another  such  partner  in  creative  power. 
The  Goethe-Schiller  Decennium  is  now 
rounded  out  to  fulfilment,  and  stands  before 
us  in  definite  outline  as  the  central  Epoch  of 
a  great  poetical  career.  From  the  first  meet- 
ing of  the  two  poets  in  1794,  till  Schiller's 
evanishment,  there  is  the  unique  prolific  asso- 
ciation of  Genius  whereby  each  shares  in  the 
other's  gift  while  keeping  and  realizing  his 
own.  Many  years  later  Goethe  tells  of  his 
personal  bereavement,  which  "deprived  me 
of  all  intimate  participation,  I  missed  the 
spiritual  push  to  effort,  and  the  furtherance 
through  a  friendly  rivalry.'' 

Accordingly,  we  are  now  to  behold  Goethe 
entering  upon  a  new  Epoch  of  his  life,  which 
shows  him  solitary  again,  but  under  condi- 
tions very  different  from  those  which  isolated 
and  estranged  him  on  his  return  from  Italy. 
He  has  risen  to  be  the  great  Goethe  with  an 
ever-increasing  recognition  in  his  own  coun- 
try and  in  the  rest  of  Europe.  Visitors  be- 
gin to  throng  Weimar,  eager  to  catch  a  word 


GOETHE  ALONE  AGAIN.  479 

from  him  or  even  a  glimpse  of  him  on  the 
street.  Particularly  after  the  publication  of 
his  First  Part  of  Faust  in  1808,  he  is  getting 
to  be  acclaimed  a  world-poet  of  the  first  mag- 
nitude, brothered  with  Homer  and  Shakes- 
peare. To  be  sure,  there  was  then  decided 
opposition  to  the  man  and  his  work,  and  it 
still  is  not  silent.  But  his  place  not  only  .in 
German  but  in  universal  Literature  can  no 
longer  be  gainsaid. 

The  first  effect  of  Schiller's  death  upon 
Goethe  was  a  kind  of  stupor  which  lamed  his 
production.  Then  followed  during  the  next 
year  the  overwhelming  calamity  of  Na- 
poleon's invasion  of  Germany.  Troops  were 
marching  everywhere,  preparing  for  the  con- 
flict; unspeakable  anxiety  oppressed  all  the 
people  and  paralyzed  the  mental  activity  of 
everybody  except  the  philosopher  Hegel,  who 
is  "said  to  have  completed  his  "  Phenome- 
nology" to  the  thunders  of  the  cannon  at  the 
battle  of  Jena.  French  soldiery  poured  into 
Weimar,  plundering,  burning,  murdering. 
They  entered  Goethe's  house  with  insolent 
demands;  two  drunken  marauders  are  said 
to  have  pushed  into  his  private  room,  where 
they  were  met  by  Christiane  with  heroic  dis- 
play of  courage  which  saved  the  life  of  the 
poet.  At  last  a  guard  was  sent  for  his  pro- 
tection, but  officers  were  billeted  on  his  house- 


480          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

hold  sometimes  in  large  numbers,  till  the  war- 
cloud  rolled  away.  Thus  a  great  national 
crisis  crushed  in  upon  the  poet  not  long  after 
the  loss  of  his  other  Self  in  Schiller.  At 
last  peace  came,  and  a  new  activity  began  to 
announce  itself  in  his  life. 

The  strange  psychologic  fact  now  rises  to 
the  surface  that  Goethe,  being  deprived  of 
the  communion  with  Schiller,  falls  back  into 
a  youthful  resurgence  of  his  fundamental 
passion.  When  his  Genius  is  no  longer 
stirred  in  its  creative  sources  by  another  cor- 
responding Genius,  there  wells  forth  from 
the  depths  his  former  love  of  woman  as  the 
controlling  power  over  his  destiny.  Young 
Phileros  wakes  up  slowly,  and  begins  to  throb 
again  with  fresh  ardor  in  the  breast  of  the 
graying  man.  The  old  age  of  Goethe  is  ar- 
riving by  tale  of  years,  but  with  it  blooms 
afresh  the  youth  of  his  love.  During  the  last 
Decennium  the  presence  of  Schiller  seems  to 
have  satisfied  his  heart's  deepest  longing, 
and  to  have  diverted  his  genetic  energy  into 
poetic  creation ;  but  now  that  stimulating  pro- 
pulsion of  his  Genius  is  gone,  and  he  returns 
to  his  primal  endowment  of  nature,  to  his 
original  Self  as  revealed  in  his  early  career. 

Thus  in  the  first  years  of  the  present  Epoch 
Goethe's  Muse  is  almost  benumbed  into 
speechlessness  by  two  overwhelming,  truly 


.4- 
GOETHE'S  LEGAL  MARRIAGE.  481 

cataclysmic  occurrences,  one  a  personal  and 
the  other  a  national,  the  decease  of  Schiller 
and  the  submergence  of  Fatherland.  But 
listen!  in  the  last  months  of  1807  the  poet 
was  staying  in  Jena  and  there  in  the  house  of 
the  bookseller,  Frommann,  he  looked  upon 
Minna  Herzlieb,  a  beautiful  maiden  of  nine- 
teen, and  at  once  Phileros,  the  lover  of  Love 
starts  to  rise  if  not  from  his  grave,  at  least 
from  his  long  quiescence  of  almost  twenty 
years  in  furious  resurrection  of  his  soul's  ul- 
timate passion,  which  will  equal  the  volcanic 
outburts  of  his  youth.  Then  follows  the 
needful  utterance  in  literature  for  his  life's 
rescue  from  his  own  tiger-fierce  emotions, 
since  of  course  obstacles  mounted  up  before 
him  insuperable — whereof  we  shall  say  some- 
what hereafter.  But  just  now  we  must  watch 
Phileros  enacting  a  new  scene  in  the  fatal 
sweep  of  his  life-tragedy. 


Goethe's  Legal  Marriage. 

The  battle  of  Jena  took  place  October  14, 
1806,  the  victorious  French  soon  overflowed 
Weimar,  when  Christiane  is  said  to  have 
saved  the  life  of  the  poet  by  throwing  herself 
between  him  and  two  marauders  who  brand- 


482          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

ished  drawn  daggers.  Her  deed  has  been 
variously  reported,  but  the  chief  result  of  it 
is  world-famous:'  Goethe,  after  eighteen 
years'  hesitation,  resolves  to  marry  legally 
the  maker  of  his  home  and  the  mother  of  his 
son,  now  in  his  seventeenth  year.  The  cere- 
mony is  to  be  performed  by  the  Court's  chief 
clergyman,  to  whom  Goethe  sends  by  letter 
(October  17)  the  following  request:  "Dur- 
ing these  days  and  nights  an  old  purpose  of 
mine  has  come  to  maturity.  I  wish  to  recog- 
nize fully  and  legally  as  mine  the  little  female 
friend  who  has  done  so  much  for  me,  and  also 
has  lived  through  these  hours  of  trial  with 
me.  Tell  me  what  steps  are  necessary,  as 
soon  as  possible,  etc."  Whereupon  the  mar- 
riage takes  place  two  days  afterwards  in 
presence  of  the  son,  August  Goethe,  who  is 
said  to  have  been  "enormously  delighted "  at 
what  seemed  his  new  legitimate  birth.  Ob- 
serve that  he  was  already  an  adolescent  who 
must  have  been  completely  aware  of  his  an- 
omalous station  in  the  social  world.  In  hun- 
dreds of  ways  that  had  been*  brought  home  to 
the  sensitive  youth  and  was  already  having 
its  effect  upon  his  conduct  and  character. 

Goethe  says  that  it  was  "an  old  purpose," 
which,  however,  had  been  continually  de- 
ferred until  now  when  the  consequences  of  his 
deed  could  not  be  escaped.  But  what  a  tre- 


A- 

GOETHE'S  LEGAL  MARRIAGE.  483 

mendous  pressure  it  took  to  bring  him  at  last 
to  his  final  action  ?  His  many  warnings  have 
passed  over  him,  usually  with  the  one  result, 
which  produces  a  fresh  confession  and  expia- 
tion in  some  written  book.  Severe  illness  had 
brought  him  to  death's  portal,  calling  forth 
another  crop  of  good  resolutions,  which  were 
forgotten  on  the  return  of  health.  Thus  his 
"old  purpose"  was  merely  getting  older,  till 
the  roar  of  artillery  and  the  tramp  of  inrush- 
ing  triumphant  soldiery  must  have  reminded 
him  of  the  Last  Judgment  just  at  hand.  Hence 
"during  these  days  and  nights "  his  work  of 
conscience  did  actually  mature  and  get  itself 
done.  But  it  took  all  the  cannonading  of  the 
Jena  battle  nearby,  and  the  seeming  overturn 
of  a  world  along  with  the  presence  of  Eu- 
rope's mighty  conqueror  in  person  to  drive 
him  "to  recognize  as  mine  the  little  female 
friend  (Freundinn)  who  had  done  so  much 
for  me," — nothing  less  than  saved  his  life 
at  the  risk  of  her  own.  But  give  him  credit 
that  in  the  distant  gunnery  he  heard  the  very 
crack  of  Doom,  and  hastened  to  make  peace 
with  that  institutional  order  which  he  had  so 
long  and  so  defiantly  violated. 

Now  tell  us,  ye  Powers,  will  he  escape  the 
penalty  of  his  deed?  Many  years  have  yet 
to  run  ere  we  behold  the  full  round  of  this 
life-tragedy.  But  certain  significant  points 


484          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM,— PART  SECOND. 

may  already  be  observed.  Christiane,  who 
could  give  little  if  any  response  to  his  spir- 
itual appeal,  is  distinctly  going  backward; 
she  shows  her  retrogression  in  shape  and 
conduct,  having  become  fat,  beery  and  gross ; 
she  is  excessively  given  to  dancing  and  its 
wild  excitement,  and  often  she  keeps  ques- 
tionable company.  She,  too,  has  grown  de- 
fiant, especially  of  public  rumor,  which  even 
scandalizes  her  name.  Not  all  is  to  be  be- 
lieved which  the  venomous  tongues  of  Wei- 
mar's high-toned  women  tattled  about  her 
character.  Still  enough  proof  is  documented 
that  she  surrendered  herself  to  an  excessive 
indulgence  of  her  lower  nature.  There  are 
indications  that  her  son  was  ashamed  of  her, 
thus  receiving  a  new  humiliation  in  addition 
to  that  of  his  birth.  Goethe,  while  adhering 
strictly  to  the  forms  of  married  life,  gave  her 
up  and  let  her  run  quite  at  will,  while  he 
sought  other  company.  Certainly  that  house- 
hold was  decadent,  and  moving  toward  its 
fate. 

Hence  it  comes  that  Phileros  in  his  home 
was  desolate,  and  he,  lonely  and  loveless,  was 
longing  for  a  heart's  response.  He  took  his 
own  freedom  and  gave  Christiane  her  free- 
dom. Though  verging  toward  sixty,  he  feels 
his  youth  unfettered  again  and  starts  on  a 
new  phase  of  his  career.  He  is  no  longer  re- 


GOETHE'S  LEGAL  MARRIAGE.  485 

strained  by  the  presence  of  Schiller  or  kept 
creatively  active  by  the  latter 's  Genius.  And 
practically  he  finds  in  his  family  no  adequate 
answer  to  his  emotional  nature  still  intense 
and  throbbing  for  recognition.  So  much  we 
shall  hear  him  confessing  indirectly  after  his 
fashion. 

But  how  about  the  son  in  whom  the  trag- 
edy centers?  Already  we  read  ominous 
words  about  his  resignation  to  his  fatal  in- 
heritance coming  from  both  his  father  and 
his  mother.  Does  he  not  know  what  it  is,  and 
how  it  pursues  him  everywhere?  Alas!  his 
fame  is  co-extensive  with  that  of  his  great 
parent;  he  cannot  get  beyond  its  periphery 
of  nagging  gossip.  Let  him  but  pay  a  visit  to 
his  grandmother  at  Frankfort;  as  he  walks 
down  the  street  with  the  old  lady,  what  a 
buzzing  susurrus  whispers  along  its  whole 
length !  When  he  reaches  the  right  age  he  is 
sent  to  the  University  of  Heidelberg,  but  with 
small  result.  Then  he  goes  to  Jena  to  study 
finance,  but  his  fate  follows  him;  he  could 
hear  the  students  there  making  dubious  jokes 
about  his  mother,  and  not  sparing  "old 
Goethe, "  whose  passion  for  Minna  Herzlieb 
of  that  town  was  not  hid  under  a  bushel.  The 
young  man  shunned  society  as  much  as  pos- 
sible, and  brooded  in  solitude,  so  that  he 
was  nicknamed  the  monk;  human  association 


486    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

became  a  curse  to  him,  and  lie  fled  to  the  coun- 
try at  the  age  of  twenty-one  "to  study  agri- 
culture at  Capellendorf . "  Still  this  occupa- 
tion did  not  detain  him  long.  In  the  great 
upheaval  of  Germany  against  Napoleon  he 
volunteered  as  a  soldier — a  very  creditable 
act  which,  however,  cost  his  father  untold 
anxiety.  Suffice  it  to  say  he  did  not  go  to 
war,  but  he  did  get  into  trouble  with  a  mili- 
tary officer,  and  a  duel  was  in  prospect  when 
the  anxious  parent  again  interfered  through 
a  mediator.  The  cause  of  this  affair  of  honor 
has  remained  obscure,  or  perchance  sup- 
pressed, but  every  reader  can  imagine  what 
taunts  would  hum  around  the  wretched  vic- 
tim in  the  barrack  or  at  the  mess.  So  the 
son  lived  his  tragedy. 

And  the  father  also  did  not  escape  the 
social  penalty  of  the  same  sort.  This  is  strik- 
ingly indicated  in  a  letter  which  he  wrote  in 
1792,  while  on  a  visit  to  Frankfort.  He 
speaks  of  a  certain  pleasure  in  seeing  the  old 
friends  of  his  native  city ;  then  comes  the  bit- 
ter dose  of  wormwood:  "it  is  impossible  for 
me  not  to  feel  disgust  in  all  the  social  circles 
here,  for  wherever  two  or  three  are  gathered 
together,  you  hear  the  song  now  four  years 
old  strummed  pro  and  contra,  and  not  even 
with  variations,  but  the  crude  theme  itself. " 
In  1788  (four  years  since)  we  recollect  that 


GOETHE'S  LEGAL  MARRIAGE.  487 

Goethe  met  Christiane  in  the  Weimar  Park. 
Such,  then,  is  the  music  which  plays  around 
the  poet  wherever  he  may  go,  and  will  accom- 
pany him  during' his  whole  life,  yea  for  all 
time.  But  the  pathos  of  the  situation  is  that 
his  innocent  offspring  has  to  listen  to  that 
"same  old  song"  of  disgraceful  birth.  And 
yet  this  buzzing  environment  of  everlasting 
tattle  is  not  all  or  the  worst,  as  we  see  by  the 
same  letter,  in  which  Goethe  growls  at  his 
printed  deed:  "Unfortunately  the  newspa- 
pers go  everywhere ;  these  are  now  my  most 
dangerous  foes."  Publicity  is  verily  the 
devil's  arch-enemy,  or  rather  he  turns  it  into 
an  instrument  of  his  subtlest  torture.  So  it 
comes  that  the  low  transitory  whisper  is  en- 
dowed with  a  voice  of  thunder,  which  rolls 
through  space  and  over  time,  and  moreover 
becomes  the  persistent  undertone  of  Goethe 's 
life-poem. 

What  is  the  solution  of  his  son's  desperate 
problem!  What  can  he,  now  a  grown  man, 
do  with  himself  in  this  environment  of  Hell, 
which  broils  him  in  torment  and  damns  him 
guiltless?  One  monition  only  can  be  given 
him:  "flee,  much-enduring  youth,  get  away 
from  Weimar,  from  Germany,  perchance 
from  Europe,  break  out  of  the  doomful 
shadow  of  thy  parent's  name,  begin  thy  life 
anew,  unknown  it  may  be,  but  still  thine. 


488         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

Here  thou  canst  not  compel  thy  lot,  too  weak 
art  thou  for  that,  so  flee  if  thou  wouldst  avoid 
thy  tragedy  now  surely  approaching. " 

The  father  is  in  the  same  fatal  atmosphere, 
and  doubtless  feels  a  deeper  conflict  on  ac- 
count of  his  deed  of  guilt,  source  of  all  these 
woes  to  himself  and  to  his  own.  But  he  is 
the  Fate-compeller,  and  the  tragic  counter- 
stroke  though  it  makes  him  wince  in  agony 
cannot  undo  him.  Let  us  note  him  again  at 
his  task  of  self-expression,  which  has  in  his 
case  the  power  of  loosening  the  grip  of 
destiny. 

II. 

Pandora. 

This  drama  is  again  one  of  Goethe 's  mighty 
fragments,  and  shows  the  poet  himself  as  a 
fragment  when  composing  it  during  the  pres- 
ent Epoch.  It  reaches  backward  and  for- 
ward, mirroring  past  and  future,  in  the  stress 
of  the  present;  classic  in  form,  it  is  highly 
symbolic  and  often  enigmatic  in  content. 
Europe,  civilization,  the  new  incoming  eco- 
nomic order  play  into  it,  requiring  the  far- 
thest outstretch  of  our  thought ;  yet  it  also 
reveals  the  intense  personal  experience  of 
the  poet,  his  immediate  emotional  overflow. 
To  us  it  hints  a  grand  transition,  giving  the 


PANDORA.  489 

first  throbs  of  the  coming  third  period  of  his 
total  career;  he  begins  to  return  upon  him- 
self in  order  to  renew  and  restore  his  Genius. 
Still  his  face  is  set  frontward.  He  goes  back 
to  his  Titanism  for  the  purpose  of  recon- 
structing it  and  himself ;  also  that  wonderful 
youth  of  his  he  will  repossess  and.graft  upon 
his  aged  trunk. 

The  original  name  of  the  drama  was  Pan- 
dora's Return,  in  which  designation  is  sug- 
gested the  deepest  fact  of  the  poem  as  well 
as  of  the  poet  during  this  Epoch.  She,  the 
all-gifted  woman  of  his  youthful  love,  is  com- 
ing back,  yea  has  already  come  back,  if  the 
truth  be  spoken  out ;  he  has  felt  her  presence 
rejuvinating  him  with  his  early  elemental 
passion  which  she  has  stirred  from  its  primal 
sources.  Hardly  has  he  had  any  such  com- 
pelling experience  of  heart  for  two  decades, 
not  since  he  fatefully  met  Christiane  in  the 
Weimar  Park.  Note  with  care  that  he  has 
been  gotten  ready  by  the  formative  power  of 
life's  events,  when  across  his  path  on  the  mo- 
ment flits  the  maidenly  shape,  just  the  right 
one  out  of  hundreds  and  hundreds.  Thus  tho 
senescent  poet  is  dipped  into  the  fountain  of 
youth  and  suddenly  becomes  creative,  rising 
from  his  baptism  with  the  conception  born  of 
his  living  experience.  Pandora  has  returned. 
Great  is  his  delight  at  the  divine  appearance 


490    GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

of  woman's  love  which  the  Muse  bids  him 
celebrate  at  once  in  song. 

Unfortunately  Pandora  is  not  present  in 
this  fragment  which  lies  between  her  first 
coming  and  her  return.  Thus  she  is  both  a 
memory  and  a  hope — a  glory  that  is  past  and 
a  beauty  that  is  to  be.  Between  these  two 
ideals  the  poem  floats  airily  and  iridescently 
like  a  sky-borne  balloon,  giving  rise  to  much 
wondering  and  conjecture.  Many  an  inter- 
pretation of  the  work  is  longer  than  the  work 
itself  which  sends  indeed  rapid  lightning 
flashes  in  all  directions,  from  the  old  Greek 
Mythus  down  to  the  present.  The  title  itself 
is  an  oracle  which  runs  double,  indeed  sev- 
eral meanings  often  glimmer  around  persons 
and  incidents.  The  whole  is  not  an  allegory, 
though  it  has  its  allegoric  spots;  rather  we 
may  call  it  a  phantasmagory,  employing  a 
term  applied  by  the  poet  himself  to  his  Hel- 
ena, with  which  piece  this  Pandora  is  closely 
akin  in  poetic  mood  and  form,  as  well  as  in 
its  varied  metrical  scheme.  It  is  kept  mainly 
in  antique  measures,  yet  with  inbreaking 
rhymes  of  love.  Thus  it  belongs  still  to  the 
poet's  classic  Period,  into  which,  however, 
is  pushing  a  new  era.  That  twofoldness  of 
his  art,  manifesting  its  Hellenic  and  Teutonic 
strains  we  yet  find,  but  it  now  creates  only  a 
fragment,  and  this  is  the  last  of  its  kind,  with 


'  .4- 
PANDORA.  491 

possibly  one  exception.  Still  the  general 
meaning  is  plain  enough,  and  winds  through 
the  whole  poem :  Goethe  is  swaying  between 
his  past  and  future,  between  youth  and  age ; 
Pandora,  the  ideal  of  love  belongs  to  his  two 
Paradises,  the  one  that  has  been  and  the  one 
that  is  to  be ;  though  gone  she  is  coming  back. 
The  present  intermezzo  looks  behind  and  be- 
fore, is  charactered  with  hindsight  and  fore- 
sight as  suggested  in  the  names  of  Epime- 
theus  and  Prometheus;  the  reader  goes  up 
and  down,  teetering  between  senescence  and 
juvenescence  often  in  a  poetical  ecstasy.  In 
this  poem  is  a  kind  of  bridge  not  only  between 
its  two  unfinished  portions,  but  between  the 
middle  and  last  Periods  of  the  poet's  own 
career. 

The  two  Goethes,  the  old  and  the  young, 
appear  before  us  in  the  first  two  characters 
of  the  drama  under  the  names  Epimetheus 
and  Phileros.  The  former  looks  back  to  his 
youth  in  a  vein  of  pensive  reminiscence,  and 
soliloquizes  over  the  time  when  "my  heart 
beat  joyously  as  Pandora  came  down  to  me 
from  Olympus."  But  that  time  is  past,  still 
he,  though  advanced  in  years,  awaits  hope- 
fully her  return.  Well,  who  is  this  young 
man  coming  upon  him  and  chanting  a  raptur- 
ous song  of  love:  "Nor  rest  nor  repose  can 
quiet  my  throes. "  Thus  appears  Phileros 


492          GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

(so  named  here)  his  youthful  counterpart 
who  presents  a  vivid  image  to  him  of  his  for- 
mer passion  for  Pandora.  Here  we  see  the 
two  Goethes,  with  a  full  generation  between 
them,  yet  both  one  in  love.  Phileros,»  the 
lover  of  Love,  has  something  of  a*  career  in 
this  poem,  but  is  not  developed  to  his  full 
promise ;  for  his  fruition  we  must  follow  him 
as  a  character  through  Goethe's  whole  life- 
poem  in  which  he  moves  from  beginning  to 
end. 

Such  is  the  one  thread  of  the  present  work. 
But  there  is  interwoven  in  it  a  wholly  differ- 
ent set  of  characters  who  are  filled  with  an 
opposite  tendency  and  belong  to  another  phy- 
sical as  well  as  social  world.  This  is  the  part 
of  Prometheus  here  representing  Productive 
Industry,  with  his  retinue  of  smiths,  shep- 
herds, workmen.  He  stands  for  will-power  in 
strong  contrast  with  his  brother  Epimetheus, 
who  is  more  the  subjective,  emotional  brood- 
ing element,  with  a  strain  of  art  and  philoso- 
phy. The  realist  and  idealist,  the  active  and 
the  contemplative  souls  are  the  antithetic 
brothers,  the  practical  and  the  theoretical, 
even  the  material  and  the  spiritual.  Two  Ger- 
manies  we  may  likewise  deem  them,  so  that 
Goethe  here  shows  his  prophetic  glance ;  Epi- 
metheus is  the  Germany  of  the  poet's  time, 
with  its  creative  philosophy,  music,  poetry 


PANDORA.  493 

and  lack  of  will ;  Prometheus  is  the  Germany 
of  to-day  with  its  marvelous  industrial  de- 
velopment, its  materialism,  militarism,  its 
superabundance  of  will  but  a  corresponding 
lack  of  the  creatively  ideal  spirit.  Thus  Goe- 
the throws  a  foreshadow  of  his  nation's  fu- 
ture, faint  indeed  but  at  present  very  sug- 
gestive. 

Again  the  poet  tries  his  hand  at  the  ever- 
fascinating  old  Greek  Mythus  of  Prometheus 
which  he  had  already  tackled  far  back  in 
his  Frankfort  Epoch  of  Titanism.  Pro- 
metheus was  then  portrayed  as  the  God- 
defiant  Titan;  in  fact  the  poet  seems  to 
have  composed  at  Frankfort  two  distinct 
fragments,  a  dramatic  and  a  lyric  on  the 
subject  of  Prometheus,  though  some  hold 
that  the  two  are  really  one  and  the 
same  work.  But  much  later,  in  his  Goethe- 
Schiller  Epoch,  he  takes  again  a  Prome- 
thean spell,  and  will  write  in  the  wake  of 
ancient  Aeschylus,  a  Prometheus  Unbound 
but  without  any  finished  result.  Shelley 
seized  the  same  theme,  but  in  spite  of  his 
overflowing  poetry  has  he  really  unbound 
Prometheus?  Can  the  chained  Titan  be  un- 
bound in  Europe?  Doubtful;  at  any  rate  its 
greatest  recent  poet,  after  testing  his 
strength  gave  up  the  attempt.  But  now  in 
Pandora,  a  decade  or  more  afterwards,  Goe- 


494         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

the  again  picks  up  Prometheus  and  recon- 
structs the  fable  from  a  totally  different 
point  of  view,  which,  however,  is  hinted  in 
the  old  account.  But  once  more  his  work  re- 
mains a  torso;  he  evidently  breaks  down  at 
the  part  of  Prometheus;  moreover  his  class- 
icism is  seen  to  be  waning,  if  not  passing 
through  its  final  stage;  after  a  marvelous 
creative  Period  it  is  being  transcended  by  the 
ever-evolving  poet.  So  we  feel  like  affection- 
ately saying:  Good-bye,  Prometheus,  and 
thy  ancient  Hellenic  WjDrld. 

But  there  is  a  vital  part  of  this  drama 
which  is  not  going  to  vanish.  Beautiful  Pan- 
dora may  not  return  to  her  old  Epimetheus 
in  her  antique  shape ;  the  poet  can  no  longer 
conjure  her  back.  Yet  her  living,  new-born 
form  of  youth  cannot  be  kept  away;  behold, 
here  she  comes  in  all  the  freshness  of  young 
life  and  beauty. 


III. 

.  Love's  New  Epiphany. 

The  return  of  Pandora  into  Goethe's  life 
is  now  to  be  set  forth,  not  symbolically  and 
enigmatically  through  an  old  Mythus,  but  as 
an  actual  living  presence  appearing  in  per- 
son to  his  physical  eye-sight.  Let  us,  accord- 


LOVE'S  NEW  EPIPHANY.  495 

ingly,  scan  with  some  precision  the  young 
lady  who  stands  at  such  an  important  stage 
in  Goethe's  evolution,  quite  as  important  is  it 
as  the  Italian  Journey.  For  she  possesses 
the  charm  to  whelm  the  poet,  now  touching 
the  fringe  of  his  gray  years,  into  the  foun- 
tain of  youthful  love  in  which  he  will  make  a 
new  turn,  rising  from  his  deep  tribulation 
over  the  loss  of  his  friend,  over  the  political 
misery  of  his  land,  over  the  hapless  deca- 
dence of  his  own  household  (which  Schiller 
had  already  designated  as  wretched),  and 
unfolding  into  a  supreme  recovery  and  re- 
newal of  his  Genius.  The  epiphany  of  Minna 
Herzlieb  is  an  engrossing  event  in  Goethe's 
life-poem,  she  becomes  the  pivotal  personality 
through  whom  he  wheels  about  not  simply  to 
a  new  Epoch,  but  to  a  new  Period  of  his  total 
career.  For  the  naive  simple-hearted  maid- 
en of  nineteen  possessed  the  magic  power, 
quite  unknown  to  herself,  of  waking  up  Phil- 
eros,  the  lover  of  Love,  from  his  long  som- 
nolence if  not  deep  sleep. 

She  was  the  adopted  daughter  of  the  book- 
seller Frommann,  with  whom  Goethe  dealt 
in  Jena,  and  in  whose  house  he  was  a  visitor. 
Thus  she  had  come  under  his  eye  as  a  child, 
and  had  attracted  him,  as  he  long  afterwards 
confessed  in  a  letter  to  Zelter,  but  only  as  a 
charming  little  girl.  But  behold!  the  little 


496         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

girl  has  grown  up,  yea  has  flowered  out  into 
the  first  and  fairest  bloom  of  woman's  most 
entrancing  season.  The  poet,  paying  a  call 
at  the  Frommann  household,  witnesses  the 
divine  vision;  the  call  is  repeated  as  Goethe 
is  somewhat  solitary,  and  Minna,  at  the  time, 
it  seems,  is  sole  housekeeper,  the  foster- 
mother  being  absent  from  town  on  a  trip,  as 
the  record  tells  us.  Thus  the  Goddess  Op- 
portunity has  deftly  laid  the  train  when  fol- 
lows the  explosion.  The  poet  in  a  sonnet  ad- 
dressed to  her,  compares  himself  to  a  maker 
of  fireworks,  who  with  all  his  careful  fore- 
thought and  skill  finds  that  "the  power  of 
the  element  is  stronger  than  himself,  and  be- 
fore he  knows  it  he  is  blown  to  pieces  up  in 
the  air."  Thus  Goethe  again  experiences  one 
of  his  mightiest  elemental  loves,  which  be- 
comes the  more  intense  as  it  is  impossible  of 
fruition,  like  that  of  Lotte  Buff,  for  he  has 
now  a  legal  wife,  and  the  young  lady  is  al- 
ready engaged.  Hence  rises  a  strain  which 
will  wind  itself  through  all  the  work  of  his 
old-age,  the  sad  antiphony  to  Love's  joyous 
renewal,  namely  Love's  renunciation. 

It  is  acknowledged  that  Minna  Herzlieb 
possessed  no  great  amount  of  bodily  or  intel- 
lectual strength ;  she  was  a  slender,  spare- 
waisted,  dreamy  maiden,  truly  an  innocent 
flower-nature.  A  keen-eyed  woman  gives  this 


LOVE'S  NEW  EPIPHANY.  497 

description  of  her:  "The  loveliest  of  all  vir- 
ginal roses,  with  childlike  features,  with 
large  dark  eyes.  The  black  braids  fell  spark- 
ling down  her  back,  her  pleasing  countenance 
was  enlivened  by  the  warm  fresh  glance  of 
color ;  her  form  was  slender  and  supple.  Of 
happiest  proportion,  and  exceedingly  grace- 
ful in  every  motion. ' '  Thus  Goethe  now  be- 
held her,  doubtless  at  the  most  beautiful  mo- 
ment of  her  life  when  she  was  just  putting 
forth  the  finest  bloom  of  young  maidenhood. 
Long  he  had  watched  her  in  the  bud  with  a 
paternal  interest,  but  sudden  and  overwhelm- 
ing is  the  surprise  of  love  at  her  flowering, 
so  that  he  sings :  "In  the  train  of  the  spring- 
tide she  steps  forth  glorious — I  recognize 
her,  I  seize  her,  and  am  undone. ' ' 

But  now  the  other  side  comes  up — did  she 
requite  his  love — and  what  was  her  fate  thus 
to  be  passioned  of  a  Genius,  loved  as  it  were 
by  a  demigod!  She  has  left  a  slight  record 
of  her  feeling:  "indescribably  happy  and  yet 
so  full  of  woe  in  his  presence. "  She  confesses 
that  when  she  went  back  to  her  own  room 
after  hearing  "the  golden  words  flow  from 
his  mouth  for  an  evening "  she  broke  down  in 
tears,  as  she  thought  "what  the  man  could 
make  of  himself. "  There  is  little  doubt  that 
the  simple  but  deeply  receptive  girl's  heart 
heard  the  most  exquisite  passes  of  Goethe's 


498         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

Genius,  for  he  could  not  help  doing  his  best 
under  tha-t  all- summoning  spell  of  love.  She 
might  not  understand  it  wholly,  but  she  cer- 
tainly felt  the  supernal  treasures  of  the  Muse 
to  be  pouring  down  at  her  feet.  And  yet  we 
hear  from  certain  forlorn  reporters  that  Min- 
na Herzlieb  never  knew  of  Goethe's  love, 
still  less  did  she  requite  it.  Impossible  for 
any  mortal  woman  in  such  a  presence  with  a 
young  heart  like  hers;  besides,  such  a  state- 
ment contradicts  what  her  own  words  imply, 
and  what  Goethe  more  than  implies  in  his 
sonnets,  which  pertain  mainly  to  her  and  him- 
self. Then  her  reflection  in  certain  of  his 
characters  hints  the  truth  of  the  situation. 

But  next  we  ask  with  some  anxiety,  what 
became  of  the  sweet  little  creature  who  had 
quite  unawares  called  down  upon  herself 
such  an  overpowering  Olympian  passion.  It 
seems  that  her  first  early  betrothal  was 
broken  off,  and  the  following  spring  (1808) 
she  quit  Jena  and  remained  absent  for  years. 
Why  was  she  hurried  away  from  her  home 
in  that  fashion  ?  Fourteen  years  later  when 
she  was  thirty-three,  she  married  a  Jena  Pro- 
fessor, but  the  union  was  not  happy,  and  a 
separation  soon  took  place.  Alas,  the  fate- 
ful woman  in  whose  heart  was  throned  the 
love  of  a  demi-god — how  can  she  ever  again 
give  that  heart  to  a  common  mortal !  In  fact 


LOVE'S  NEW  EPIPHANY.  499 

her  whole  being,  reason  itself  became  in- 
volved in  this  overturn  of  her  destiny,  and 
we  read  that  her  mind  passed  into  an  eclipse 
which  hung  over  the  rest  of  her  long  life,  she 
surviving  till  1865.  Thus  we  have  to  see  in 
her  a  tragic  lot,  and  we  are  reminded  of  Clara 
in  Egmont  who,  already  promised  to  an  ord- 
inary man,  Brackenburg,  breaks  away  from 
her  engagement  when  she  meets  an  heroic 
lover  and  becomes  filled  with  his  demonic 
spirit  so  that  she  dies  the  death  of  the  hero- 
ine. Thus  Goethe  has  portrayed  a  woman 
obsessed  with  an  all-controlling  love  for  her 
ideal  man;  but  such  power  tender  gentle 
Minna  does  not  own,  and  hence  she  collapses 
within  under  the  awful  burden,  recalling  Ot- 
tilia in  Elective  Affinities  for  whose  portrait 
she  furnished  important  features  to  the  poet. 
But  what  about  Goethe  himself  in  this  des- 
perate wrestle  with  passion?  He  too  was 
caught  in  the  resistless  maelstrom,  and  per- 
haps was  more  intensely  affected  than  the 
woman  as  there  was  more  of  him  'to  be  af- 
fected. Again  and  again  he  has  left  on  re- 
cord hints  of  his  prolonged  agony,  he  could 
not  recover  from  the  continued  upbursts  of 
his  deepest  nature,  he  calls  it  an  ever-bleed- 
ing wound  "  which  will  not  let  itself  be  healed, 
a  heart  which  is  afraid  to  get  well."  Such 
are  the  passionate  words  which  he  sets  down 


500         GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  SECOND. 

in  his  diary,  as  if  he  too  were  a  lost  soul  in 
the  Inferno  of  love.  Yet  he  is  not,  he  cannot 
perish  in  this  way,  for  see  him  again  seize 
hold  of  that  Fate-defying  weapon  of  his, 
namely  his  pen,  out  of  which  begin  to  flow  all 
his  sorrows  with  confession,  expiation,  then 
final  relief  and  recovery.  But  poor  little  Min- 
na, the  dear  soft-hearted  creature,  she  wields 
no  such  implement  of  salvation,  and  so  she 
sinks  under  the  soul-cleaving,  life-long  tra- 
gedy of  her  love. 

But  such  was  the  length  and  the  strength 
of  this  conflict  in  the  poet,  its  oft-recurring 
and  heart-wrenching  paroxysms,  that  it  will 
require  not  merely  a  single  book  but  quite  a 
library  for  its  exorcism  through  expression. 
More  than  one  big  dose  of  his  quill-craft  he 
will  have  to  administer  to  himself,  for  the 
awful  convulsions  of  his  passion  keep  return- 
ing, his  wounded  heart " is  afraid  to  get  well," 
and  keeps  bleeding  afresh.  The  result  is  that 
a  small  Herzlieb  literature  springs  up  around 
this  node  of  his  Career.  No  other  woman  of 
his  many  loves  ever  compelled  him  to  write 
so  many  tomes  before  he  could  get  rid  of  her 
haunting  presence.  Four  works  directly  be- 
long here:  (1)  the  Sonnets,  the  least  of  all, 
yet  the  significant  starting-point;  (2)  Pan- 
dora, a  drama  already  considered;  (3)  Elec- 
tive Affinities,  a  novel  to  be  noted  later;  (4) 


LOVE'S  NEW  EPIPHANY.  501 

Goethe's  Autobiography,  which  is  the  axial 
work  of  a  wholly  new  Period  in  the  poet's 
life.  This  is  what  we  are  next  to  consider. 

Here,  then,  ends  the  present  Epoch,  and 
with  it  the  entire  Second  Period,  which  we 
may  remember,  took  its  start  when  Goethe 
set  out  for  Italy.  But  now  he  sets  out  for  his 
last  home,  by  way  of  returning  to  his  first. 


/ne 

(1809-1832.} 

Evidently  we  are  now  to  behold  Goethe  en- 
tering upon  his  Third  Period,  the  final  one 
of  his  life,  and  having  its  own  distinctive 
character.  As  indicated  by  the  given  dates, 
it  continued  some  twenty-three  years,  thus 
being  of  quite  the  same  duration  as  his  pre- 
vious Second  Period,  of  which  it  is  both  the 
antithesis  and  the  fulfilment.  Its  first  begin- 
ning, however,  cannot  well  be  dated  to  the 
precise  year,  if  we  take  into  account  all  the 

(502) 


GOETHE  THE  OLD  MAN.  503 

precedent  signs  of  its  gradual  growth.  There 
is  no  single  sudden  act  to  emphasize  its  start- 
ing-point, like  Goethe 's  departure  for  Italy, 
of  which  the  exact  time  is  known,  and  which 
gives  the  commencement  of  the  Second  Pe- 
riod. We  might  take  Goethe 's  meeting  with 
Minna  Herzlieb  in  the  fall  of  1807  as  the  germ 
of  this  new  transition ;  but  that  germ  had  to 
develop  in  order  to  show  what  it  truly  meant. 
In  Pandora  it  was  certainly  present,  although 
still  infolded  in  the  peculiar  vesture  of  the 
Second  Period  of  the  poet,  namely  his  clas- 
sicism. But  with  the  completion  of  Elective 
Affinities  in  1809,  the  old  wrappage  is  thrown 
off  and  the  evolution  is  complete.  Moreover, 
other  works  were  then  ripening  which  indi- 
cated the  new  pivotal  transition  to  the  fu- 
ture, the  transition  from  Goethe's  middle 
life  to  his  ageing  time.  And  we  hold  that 
this  slow  inner  development  accords  with  the 
man's  years;  the  birth  of  the  infant  is  a  sud- 
den jet  lightwards,  and  may  be  registered  to 
the  hour,  but  the  birth  of  old-age  is  hesitat- 
ing and  gradual,  often  eddying  backwards  in 
youthful  resurgences,  yet  on  the  whole  driv- 
ing tardily  forwards  to  the  close.  And  here 
we  may  dare  whisper  a  theory  of  ours :  the 
entire  career  of  Goethe,  especially  this  last 
part,  is  best  understood  and  realized  by  an 
old  man  who  also  can  write  from  his  own  liv- 


504       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

ing  experience  and  sympathy  the  poet's  com- 
pleted biography.  We  think  that  we  have  no- 
ticed in  younger  authors  an  impatience,  es- 
pecially with  this  Third  Period,  which  in  gen- 
eral has  its  own  literary  style,  poetic  form, 
and  spiritual  world-view,  all  of  which  are 
often  contemptuously  ascribed  to  Goethe's 
senility.  It  is  our  intention,  however,  to 
grasp  it  and  to  correlate  it  as  the  necessary 
integrating  arc  of  his  all-rounded  cycle  of 
achievement.  In  his  sixtieth  year  he  is  now, 
and  will  keep  at  work  till  his  eighty-third, 
finishing  in  deed  and  writ  the  last  great  song 
of  his  life-poem. 

I.'  In  what  way  does  this  Third  Period 
differ  from  the  foregoing  Second  Period? 
First  of  all  we  may  note  that  his  devotion  to 
the  classical  world  and  its  forms  comes  to  an 
end,  if  we  except  rare  fitful  relapses.  Few 
if  any  elegies,  epigrams,  epics  after  the  old 
Hellenic  pattern;  the  antique  dramatic  style 
drops  out  of  his  literary  creation  with  one  or 
two  spasmodic  regurgitations.  He  evidently 
feels  that  he  has  delivered  his  classical  mes- 
sage; wonderful  indeed  has  been  his  work 
herein  but  it  is  done;  through  literature  he 
has  recreated  that  ancient  art-world,  and 
transfused  it  into  modern  speech  and  life. 
Thus  we  say  that  he  has  reproduced  and 
eternized  in  his  poetry  the  old  Mediterranean 


GOETHE -THE  OLD  MAN.  505 

civilization  on  the  side  of  its  culture  of 
beauty,  and  made  it  a  possible  part  of  every 
man's  education  today.  To  that  civilization 
we  have  to  go  back,  if  we  would  know  our  own 
and  ourselves;  if  indeed  we  would  become 
integral  as  our  race  has  been.  Goethe,  there- 
fore, is  a  great  mediator  of  our  present  with 
our  past,  universalizing  us  by  adding  to  our 
fragmentary  self  what  it  lacks  of  wholeness. 

Such  is  the  task  of  the  foregoing  Second 
Period  in  which  we  have  pointed  out  the  two 
interweaving  strands  under  various  names — 
Classic  and  Romantic,  Greek  and  Teutonic, 
Southern  and  Northern.  Hence  was  often 
noticed  the  twofoldness  of  that  Period,  which 
runs  through  it  from  beginning  to  end,  cul- 
minating in  the  two  poets,  Goethe  and  Schil- 
ler, each  of  whom  has  in  himself  the  same 
dualism.  But  in  the  present  Third  Period 
this  peculiar  separative  character  ceases; 
there  is  in  it  a  deep  pervasive  unity  of  form 
and  spirit ;  in  fact  we  note  a  significant  unity 
in  its  one  primordial  passion,  that  of  love, 
which  is  to  be  more  fully  considered  later  as 
its  pivotal  phenomenon. 

II.  A  change  in  Goethe's  style  has  often 
been  remarked  as  taking  place  during  this 
time.  He  becomes  the  conscious  symbolist, 
working  rather  from  the  side  of  the  inner 
meaning  than  the  immediate  vision  of  the 


506       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

poetic  object.  We  may  observe  such  a  ten- 
dency already  in  the  Second  Period.  His 
classic  figures  he  often  turns  into  symbols  or 
even  allegories,  as  may  be  examplified  in 
Pandora,  which  tendency,  however,  culmi- 
nates in  the  Second  Part  of  Faust.  Indeed 
he  passed  into  his  more  pronounced  symbol- 
ism by  way  of  his  classicism.  The  Greek 
Mythus  he  no  longer  seized  directly  in  its 
own  right  but  as  the  bearer  of  some  thought. 
Iphigenia  is  still  a  concrete  individual,  even 
if  she  suggests  a  higher  meaning;  but  Epi- 
menides  is  an  abstract  conception  wearing  a 
Greek  mask.  In  the  last  strain  of  the  Faust 
drama  he  says:  " Every  thing  transitory  is 
only  a  likeness  (Gleichniss) ,"  an  image  or 
symbol  of  what  is  not  transitory.  This  ex- 
presses, however,  not  simply  a  literary 
method,  but  his  deepest  conviction,  the  world- 
view  of  his  later  years.  Thus  he  speaks  to  • 
Eckermann  in  1824:  "I  have  regarded  all 
my  doing  and  achieving  as  only  symbolical, ' ' 
filled  with  a  content  beyond  its  immediate  ap- 
pearance. Such  is  now  his  consciousness, 
the  principle  of  his  living  as  well  as  of  his 
writing.  Long  before  (in  1797)  he  had  des- 
ignated the  poet  as  he  who  "  calls  the  partic- 
ular thing  to  its  universal  consecration, ' '  that 
is,  who  symbolizes  the  whole  finite  world. 
On  reading  again  his  Wilhelm  Meister's  Ap- 


GOETHE  THE  OLD  MAN.  507 

prenticeship  in  his  old-age  he  expresses  his 
delight  and  comfort  of  soul  "to  find  that  the 
whole  novel  is  symbolical, "  which  he  evi- 
dently did  not  think  of  when  he  wrote  it ;  he 
also  remarks  that  "behind  the  projected 
characters  there  lies  hidden  something 
higher,  something  universal/'  Nay,  he  af- 
firms that  even  "in  the  trivialties  of  Meister 
lurks  an  upper  meaning. ' '  Such  is  the  sym- 
bolic Goethe  of  this  Third  Period  looking 
back  at  the  classic-romantic  Goethe  of  the 
Second  Period.  It  is  an  orderly  evolution: 
the  old  man  casts  his  view  beyond,  with  the 
tendency  to  see  the  supersensible  in  the  sens- 
ible, the  eternal  in  the  changeful,  the  pure 
idea  in  the  real. 

Such  a  way  of  poetizing  may  seem  to  con- 
tradict the  view  of  him  which  we  have  so 
often  emphasized:  Goethe  can  only  produce 
in  his  art  what  he  has  personally  experienced. 
Not  a  few  critics  declare  that  now  he  creates 
only  abstractions,  unrealities,  phantasms, 
that  the  symbolic  Goethe  is  the  unpoetic  Goe- 
the. But  to  the  mind  which  wishes  to  grasp 
and  sympathetically  appropriate  the  whole 
poet  in  all  his  stages  of  evolution  the  present 
Period  with  its  evolved  consciousness  is  a 
necessary  phase,  for  it  is  something  deeply 
experienced,  we  believe  more  deeply  than 
ever  before,  even  if  different  from  what  has 


508       GOETHE*S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

preceded  it.  Conscious  symbolism  becomes 
increasingly  Goethe's  new  experience,  being 
at  last  a  clearer  vision  of  the  eternal  entities 
which  appear  in  the  world  of  sensation  and 
particularity. 

From  this  point  of  view  we  may  glance  at 
his  three  Periods  in  their  development.  As 
the  young  poet  he  seizes  the  immediate  fact 
or  event,  and  portrays  it  in  all  its  sensuous 
fullness;  still  there  is  in  his  work  unconr 
sciously  the  secret  pulsation  of  a  higher  en- 
ergy which  we  feel  for  instance  in  his  Gotz. 
Hence  this  may  well  be  deemed  his  time  of 
unconscious  symbolism.  In  his  Second  Pe- 
riod he  wins  the  classic  form  and  so  pos- 
sesses two  methods,  two  symbols,  we  may  call 
them,  in  his  poetic  procedure.  These  come 
together  in  his  Third  Period  whose  charac- 
teristic is  that  of  conscious  symbolism  which 
bespeaks  the  deepest  experience  of  the  old 
poet  when  he  delights  to  behold  the  Beyond 
in  the  Now,  the  infinite  gleaming  through  the 
finite  manifestation,  the  idea  in  the  reality. 
So  it  comes  that  when  he  looks  back  at  his 
early  productions,  he  finds  secretly  ensconced 
in  them  the  symbol,  to  his  great  happiness. 

Now  with  this  deepened  world-view  arises 
a  corresponding  change  of  his  poetic  proc- 
ess. He  once  declared  that  the  right  way  of 
poetizing  is  to  take  the  real  and  to  idealize 


GOETHE  THE  OLD  MAN.  509 

that  in  its  own  form.  This  he  said  was  one 
of  Merck's  suggestive  lessons.  The  other 
and  wrong  method  was  to  grasp  something 
imaginative  or  ideal  beforehand  and  then  to 
realize  that.  But  the  fact  now  pushes  to  the 
front  that  Goethe  in  this  Third  Period  be- 
gins to  follow  the  very  maxim  so  strongly 
forbidden  and  denounced  in  his  First  Period ; 
that  is,  we  often  see  him  start  with  the  idea 
or  even  the  abstraction,  and  proceed  to  give 
to  it  a  poetic  shape.  What  else  is  his  Hom- 
unculus  and  other  figures  in  the  Second  Part 
of  Faust,  which  have  so  often  roused  the 
wrath  of  the  narrow-souled  critic  who  seems 
unable  to  see  and  sympathize  with  the  total 
poet  in  all  the  stages  of  his  evolution?  The 
same  change  we  may  note  in  Shakespeare; 
Caliban  is  not  a  real  creature  but  an  imag- 
ined thing  or  idea  endowed  with  its  own 
shape  by  the  poet  who  showed  this  tendency 
also  in  his  ageing  time,  since  his  Tempest  was 
probably  his  last  drama.  In  fact  we  can 
catch  hints  of  a  similar  poetic  evolution  in 
ancient  Homer,  if  we  contrast  in  this  regard 
the  Iliad  with  the  Odyssey,  for  in  the  latter 
we  find  the  figure  of  Polyphemus  which  is 
certainly  not  a  real  man  but  a  product  of  the 
imagination  put  into  its  own  shape. 

Thus  we  follow  Goethe  truly  universaliz- 
ing himself  in  the  full  cycle  of  his  life-poem, 


510       GOETHE' '8  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

as  he  reaches  out  to  art-forms  which  were  at 
first  beyond  him,  and  which  he,  therefore,  ab- 
jured even  with  contempt.  Still  he  is  su- 
premely the  evolving  spirit,  indeed,  we  may 
call  him  the  very  Genius  of  evolution,  espe- 
cially in  its  literary  expression,  which  he 
manifested  not  only  in  writing  but  in  living. 
III.  But  the  supreme  world-surprising 
fact  of  this  Third  Period  is  the  return  of  the 
old  man  to  the  youthful  intensity  of  his  ele- 
mental passion,  the  rejuvenescence  of  love, 
really  of  the  lover  of  Love.  As  this  turn  of 
his  struck  down  to  the  bottom  of  his  whole 
emotional  nature,  it  had  to  report  itself  in 
writ,  and  thus  we  have  here  one  of  the  most 
singular  chapters  in  all  literature.  Phileros 
goes  through  a  great  new  stage  of  man's  dis- 
cipline, that  of  having  a  young  heart  in  an 
old  body,  and  this  young  heart  throbs  and 
quakes  with  its  juvenile  intoxication  till  it 
threatens  to  shatter  its  senile  frame  work, 
both  physical  and  mental.  Such  is  the  grand 
node  which  he  now  rounds  in  his  life-experi- 
ence and  in  his  life-poem.  Let  us  mark  again 
that  he,  endowed  with  such  an  inner  volcano, 
cannot  help  himself;  the  overflow  from  the 
deepest  sources  of  his  existence  bursts  up 
ere  he  can  look  about,  and  he  finds  himself 
struggling  in  the  stormy  ocean  of  his  own 
heart.  Not  once  but  thrice  in  the  course  of 


I 


GOETHE  THE  OLD  MAN.  511 

the  present  Period  does  this  shock  of  pas- 
sion recur  with  a  vehemence  which  brings 
him  to  the  verge  of  dissolution.  Still  he  es- 
capes through  that  wonderful  instrument  of 
his,  which  has  left  us  the  Goethe  literature, 
whose  message  we  are  now  considering, 
really  the  record  of  his  way  of  salvation 
from  the  Furies  of  his  own  Nature,  from  the 
tragedy  of  his  supreme  gift,  of  his  very 
Genius. 

Undoubtedly  Minna  Herzlieb  had  the  pe- 
culiar stroke  of  personality  which  whirled 
the  senescent  lover  back  to  his  primal  start- 
ing-point, so  that  he  re-lives  his  early  days 
again,  as  we  see  in  his  Autobiography.  Her 
love  moved  him  creatively  to  reproduce  his 
first  young  loves,  which  he  narrates  with  so 
much  fullness  and  zest.  Here  we  reach  down 
to  the  basic  fact  of  the  present  Period:  the 
return  of  a  self-completing  human  career  to 
its  germinal  commencement  which  thus  cir- 
cles to  the  full  its  last  stage,  and  interlinks 
with  the  first.  We  see  the  old  man  now  go- 
ing back  not  only  to  review  his  youth  but  to 
renew  and  re-live  it,  thereby  re-enacting 
afresh  and  so  finishing  his  life-poem.  The 
pivot  of  this  ultimate  return — we  may  say  of 
this  soul  to  itself — is  that  original  elemental 
love  which  joins  him  with  creation  itself. 

So  it  comes  that  Phileros  again  rises  to  the 


512       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

front  and  resumes  his  place  as  the  central, 
all-compelling  character  of  the  poet's  work. 
He  is  rejuvenated  and  thus  endowed  with  a 
fresh  power  of  man's  love  for  woman,  which 
is  so  deeply  coupled  with  the  creative  instinct 
of  his  Genius.  A  new-born  Phileros,  then, 
we  behold,  both  in  action  and  in  poetic  pro- 
duction; another  palingenesis  it  may  be 
deemed,  bringing  forth  the  soul  again  with 
renewed  generation ;  to  employ  Goethe  *s  own 
suggestive  word  about  himself,  it  is  his  third 
"puberty,"  no  longer  his  second,  which  he 
has  outgrown,  and  of  course  not  his  first,  to 
which,  however,  he  goes  back,  and  which 
through  writing  he  reproduces  in  its  fervid 
energy.  Passion  is  here,  but  with  the  mighty 
deep-flowing  momentum  of  years,  not  so 
much  with  the  bubbling  buoyancy  or  with  the 
tempestuous  outburst  of  youth. 

Already  we  have  watched  this  profoundest 
strain  of  Goethe 's  Genius,  and  traced  it  from 
his  boyhood  as  it  weaves  through  all  his 
activity,  unwritten  as  well  as  written,  till  the 
present  Period  when  it  revolves  around  to 
where  it  begins,  yet  carrying  with  it  the  full 
experience  which  he  has  won  up  to  date.  But 
mark  the  difference  between  then  and  now: 
then  in  his  First  Period  he  was  pushing  for- 
ward unconsciously,  instinctively  in  soul- 
wrenching  throes  to  his  youthful  production, 


GOETHE  THE  OLD  MAN.  513 

such  as  Werther;  but  now  he  turns  backward 
to  his  life's  first  fountain,  as  if  to  re-bear 
himself  through  his  own  creative  act  of 
Genius,  to  re-enact  his  birth  by  his  art,  thus 
originating  his  own  origin  and  rounding  his 
ideal  cycle  of  being.  Note  once  more,  that 
love,  the  primordial  creative  power  of  the 
universe,  is  what  is  driving  him  to  this  act 
of  his  own  re-creation,  which  is  the  grand 
climacteric  of  his  life  as  well  as  the  final  ful- 
filment of  his  poetic  career. 

In  this  Third  Period,  accordingly,  we  must 
see  Goethe  transcending  his  Second  Period 
so  that  the  latter  becomes  a  part  or  constit- 
uent of  his  total  self,  as  well  as  a  part  or  con- 
stituent of  human  culture.  For  that  is  just 
his  power :  he  elevates  his  own  individual  ex- 
perience to  be  that  of  man,  yea  of  the  uni- 
verse; he  makes  it  the  spiritual  heritage  of 
himself  and  therewith  of  his  race.  Thus  the 
Second  Period  with  all  its  marvelous  pro- 
ductivity though  transcended  is  not  lost, 
rather  it  is  preserved  ideally  forever.  Still 
in  order  to  be  the  completely  realized  man, 
he  must  rise  out  of  it,  and  go  back  to  his  first 
creative  time  and  re-make  his  own  native 
Genius  as  the  made  or  given,  thus  re-creat- 
ing, so  to  speak,  his  own  very  creation. 

IV.  Still  higher  must  we  carry  the  thought 
of  this  Third  Period  as  the  completion  and 


514       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

fulfilment  of  the  poet's  creative  selfhood, 
which  thus  brings  down  into  humanity  the 
process  of  the  All-Self  reflected  in  the  life  of 
an  individual.  Moreover  this  individual,  be- 
ing the  supreme  poetic  Genius  adumbrates 
not  only  in  his  life  but  in  his  writ  the  Cre- 
ator himself  from  whom  he  delivers  a  mes- 
sage unto  mankind.  Not  merely  the  single 
composition,  but  all  of  his  works  taken  to- 
gether form  a  revelation  of  the  supernal 
process  of  the  universe,  which  therefore  must 
seal  its  last  and  highest  impress  upon  his  life- 
poem. 

Hence  it  comes  that  this  returning  point 
with  its  sweep  backward  is  the  most  impor- 
tant node  of  a  full  human  personality,  being 
that  portion  which  completes  it  according  to 
the  perfect  supernal  vision,  and  leaves  it  not 
a  pitiful  torn  fragment  of  a  life.  It  is  that 
which  rounds  out  and  fully  finishes  the  living 
activity  of  the  mortal,  making  it  even  in  its 
brief  span  of  time  the  image  or  type  of  the 
Universal  Self,  or  rather  of  the  very  Self  of 
the  Universe.  Thus,  the  poet's  earthly  ca- 
reer becomes  the  imprint  of  the  Divine  Mind, 
and  his  writ  is  transfigured  into  a  transcript 
of  God. 

Here  we  also  reach  down  to  the  germinal 
fact  (already  noted)  that  Goethe  became 
universally  symbolic  in  this  Third  Period, 


.*• 

GOETHE  THE  OLD  MAN.  515 

which  indeed  rounds  out  his  life  into  a  sym- 
bol of  the  All.  Thus  he  symbolizes  whatever 
he  sees  and  does,  for  he  has  himself  turned 
to  a  symbol  not  only  incarnate  but  insouled 
of  the  Highest.  Such  is  the  import  of  this 
Third  Period:  his  life  has  enacted  the  sym- 
bol, his  poetry  has  written  the  symbol,  his 
very  consciousness  has  become  the  symbol  of 
the  all-conscious  Self  bearing  the  seal  of  its 
sovereign  process.  No  wonder  he  declares 
to  Eckermann  in  old-age:  that  he  looks 
back  on  everything  achieved  by  himself  "as 
symbolical. ' ' 

And  yet  further  we  must  carry  out  this  re- 
turn of  Goethe  during  the  present  Third  Pe- 
riod. There  is  strikingly  manifested  in  him 
the  psychical  return,  which  shows  his  inner- 
most original  Self  going  back  and  regarding 
itself  under  many  forms,  and  in  these  realiz- 
ing itself  as  eternally  objective  and  present, 
as  immortal.  For  in  some  way  we  have  to 
account  for  the  immortality  of  Goethe,  where- 
in his  Self  through  his  accomplishment  par- 
took of  the  Eternal  Self  in  its  deathless  proc- 
ess. Thus  his  life  in  its  complete  cycle  may 
be  deemed  a  Theophany,  the  appearance  of 
God  in  the  finite  individual,  whose  writ  with 
its  special  inspiration  is  a  kind  of  new  Scrip- 
ture of  which  the  supreme  function  is  media- 
torial like  all  Greatest  Literature,  mediating 


516       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

the  limited,  erring,  discordant  creature  with 
the  universal  harmony  of  the  whole  Creation. 
Undoubtedly  Goethe  has  the  Negative,  both 
in  the  deed  and  in  the  record,  more  of  ii>  per- 
haps than  any  other  modern  poet;  still  he 
shows  the  Negative  overcome  especially  in 
this  third  Period.  Mephistopheles  defines 
himself  "a- part,"  and  further  "a  part  of  the 
part,"  but  even  he  is  to  be  integrated  with 
the  great  Totality  and  "work  the  Good," 
though  willing  the  Bad.  So  we  catch  the 
poet  of  Faust  far  back  making  the  Devil 
prophesy  his  own  undoing,  which  in  fact  is 
perpetually  going  on. 

Thus  Goethe's  biography  may  be  taken  as 
revealing  the  principle  and  the  process  of 
Universal  Biography,  of  which  it  is  the  most 
typical  instance,  or  the  largest,  most  compre- 
hensive symbol  yet  realized  in  the  life  of  an 
individual  man. 

V.  In  what  work  of  Goethe  is  the  present 
Period  most  distinctively  represented!  Our 
judgment  speaks  for  the  book  which  we  shall 
call  his  Autobiography  (Wahrheit  und  Dich- 
tung),  best  known  in  English  translation  un- 
der the  name  of  Truth  and  Fiction  (or  Po- 
etry). Significant  is  the  double  title  indicat- 
ing Goethe 's  present  view  of  his  life  and  art 
as  symbolic;  really  the  two  words  might  be 
rendered  "Fact  and  Symbol,"  or  the  literal 


GOETHE  THE  OLD  MAN.  517 

events  of  his  time  and  their  higher  meaning. 
Thus  the  name  of  the  book  already  hints  the 
general  artistic  character  of  the  Third 
Period. 

Moreover,  the  composition  of  this  work 
will  be  continued  through  the  rest  of  the  po- 
et's life,  thus  overarching  the  whole  of  the 
Third  Period,  from  beginning  to  end.  The 
last  portion  of  the  Autobiography  was  fin- 
ished in  1831,  some  months  before  his  death. 
The  starting-point  is  declared  by  Eiemer  to 
have  been  August  28,  1808,  the  poet's  birth- 
day when  he  was  fifty-nine  years  old.  But 
there  is  no  doubt  that  the  subject  before  that 
date  had  been  simmering  in  his  mind,  till  it 
crystallized  to  a  definite  plan  and  purpose. 
Naturally  we  ask  what  was  the  deepest  im- 
pulse which  drove  him  to  seize  his  pen  and  to 
give  such  a  long  account  of  his  early  days. 
His  narrative  includes  many  matters  of 
many  sorts,  often  heterogeneous,  even  if  con- 
nected historically  with  his  town,  his  home, 
and  himself.  Moreover  its  portions  are  writ- 
ten with  varying  degrees  of  literary  power 
and  of  personal  interest. 

Now  amid  such  a  diversified  mass  there  is 
one  strand  in  which  we  feel  the  poet's  heart- 
throb more  directly  and  intensely  than  in  any 
other :  it  is  the  record  of  his  early  loves  vary- 
ing from  Gretchen  to  Lili.  When  the  latter 


518       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

affair  winds  up,  the  entire  work  of  twenty 
Books  is  br6ught  to  a  conclusion.  To  be  sure, 
the  whole  remains  again  a  fragment  by  the 
great  torso-maker  of  himself  who  has  strewn 
so  many  shining  pieces  of  his  soul  along  the 
pathway  of  his  whole  life.  Goethe  never  took 
his  Autobiography  to  Weimar,  but  stopped 
it  abruptly  at  the  close  of  his  Frankfort 
Quadrennium,  shrinking  back  seemingly  from 
the  appearance  of  Frau  von  Stein,  once  the 
Muse  of  his  Genius,  but  now  at  the  writing 
of  this  work,  the  Cassandra  of  his  fatal  deed. 
Thus  his  Autobiography  deals  with  the 
basic  elemental  passion  of  his  existence  at  a 
time  when  this  passion  ran  the  gamut  of  many 
young  ladies,  not  of  the  one  old  one.  Already 
we  have  classed  these  amatory  episodes  un- 
der the  name  of  novelettes  (see  preceding 
pp.  46-173),  being  parts  of  one  great  novel 
which  is  the  book  of  his  life.  Many  have  been 
the  works  of  the  disguised  Goethe,  masking 
himself  hitherto  under  different  names  in 
drama,  novel,  poem,  but  now  it  is  the  real 
Goethe  telling  on  himself  directly  and  refus- 
ing to  hide  himself  any  longer  behind  his  va- 
rious characters.  Thus  it  is  an  act  of  liv- 
ing self -consciousness,  in  which  his  whole  life 
dips  back  upon  itself  and  therein  becomes 
self-aware.  His  Autobiography  shows  his 
inner  world  turned  outward  into  an  actual 


GOETHE  THE  OLD  MAN."  519 

existence  which  is  made  permanent  in  writ- 
ing; more  technically,  his  subjective  Ego 
gives  its  own  self-creating  form  to  its  highest 
objective  realization.  Herein  his  life-poem 
enters  its  final  sweep  toward  its  goal  of  com- 
pletion, and  lets  us  glimpse  the  supreme  func- 
tion of  Biography  which  is  to  reveal  as  ulti- 
mate in  human  consciousness  the  very  form 
and  movement  of  God-consciousness. 

VI.  Such,  then,  is  the  outer  figuration  as 
well  as  the  inner  purport  of  this  Third  Period 
of  Goethe's  life-poem,  in  which  we  seek  to 
embrace  its  written  and  unwritten  portions. 
As  already  indicated,  it  lasts  some  twenty- 
three  years,  a  long  stretch  of  life  which  also 
has  its  distinct  epochal  turns.  Hence  the 
question  arises,  upon  what  salient  point  do 
these  Epochs  revolve?  And  how  many  of 
them?  And  what  is  their  common  ground  of 
unity! 

Now  comes  to  light  the  fact  that  during, 
this  Period  occur  three  grand  resurgences  of 
love  in  the  soul  of  the  ageing  Goethe,  includ- 
ing the  one  already  described.  Thrice  the 
senescent  poet  sweeps  back  to  his  youth  in  an 
overflow  of  his  elemental  passion  which  wells 
up  into  a  wonderful  rejuvenescence.  This  is 
accompanied  by  a  corresponding  renewal  of 
creative  energy  which  leaps  forth  in  fresh 
poetic  production.  Thrice  he  gets  old  and 


520       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

drooping,  senile  and  impotent;  thrice  at  the 
vision  of  youthful  beauty  he  grows  young, 
buoyant,  creative,  with  a  fresh  radiant  ema- 
nation from  his  heart's  new  sunrise.  Thus 
his  Genius  seems  re-born  over  and  over  again, 
reckless  of  frosting  Time,  through  the  ever- 
renewing  might  of  love,  which  for  him  is  the 
primordial  regenerative  power  of  Nature. 

Woman's  love,  then,  recreates  the  poet, 
and  becomes  the  pivot  of  his  epochal  returns 
to  youthful  passion  and  its  productivity.  Ac- 
cordingly we  shall  name  the  three  Epochs  of 
the  present  Period  after  the  three  women 
who  possessed  the  unique  personal  gift  of 
rousing  through  their  love  Goethe's  ageing 
Genius  to  a  thrice-repeated  youth  and  poetic 
renascence.  Their  names,  made  immortal  by 
a  poet's  glance,  run  as  follows:  I.  Minna 
Herzlieb ;  II.  Marianne  Willemer ;  III.  Ulrike 
Von  Levetzow, 


MINNA  HERZLIEB.  521 


CHAPTER  SEVENTH. 

MINNA   HERZLIEB. 

It  was  Minna  Herzlieb,  then,  who  made 
Goethe  autobiographic,  driving  him  through 
a  real  love  to  remember  and  to  recount  the 
loves  of  his  youth.  She  is  verily  the  axis 
upon  which  he  turns  about  to  his  starting- 
point,  thus  periodizing  the  last  stage  of  his 
life.  To  be  sure  he  was  ready,  the  years  had 
to  prepare  him  for  his  new  node  of  exist- 
ence, his  own  Self  must  evolve  to  the  point 
where  its  bent  was  to  look  back  upon  its  past. 
Longevity  is  naturally  reminiscent.  But  just 
at  such  a  conjuncture  appeared  Minna  Herz- 
lieb, and  in  his  heart  made  him  young  again, 
causing  him  not  only  to  recall  but  to  renew 
its  fiercest  youthful  throbs  at  the  sight  of  the 
entrancing  maiden.  Thus  she  determines 
the  chief  direction  of  his  looking  backwards, 
in  fact  she  unconsciously  dictates  to  him  just 
that  upon  which  he  is  to  focus  his  soul  and 
his  pen. 

Moreover  he  will  no  longer  veil  his  ex- 
periences behind'  other  names  than  his  own, 
but  will  tell  on  himself  openly;  so  he  drops 


522       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

the  disguises  which  he  has  put  on  in  drama, 
novel,  lyric,  and  unashamed  recounts  the 
secret  love-life  of  Phileros  from  its  begin- 
ning. Thus  he  unmasks  his  heart,  has  to  do  so, 
since  he  now  recognizes  himself  as  universal 
lover,  in  whose  career  any  particular  love  is 
but  a  transitory  manifestation.  This  latter 
he  can  disguise  in  some  special  character  and 
has  done  so  hitherto;  here,  however,  in  his 
Autobiography  he  must  make  his  confession 
not  partial  but  absolute.  Hence  we  see  him 
aligning,  as  far  as  his  work  goes,  all  his  loves, 
each  of  which  has  its  literature,  in  one  com- 
plete revelation  which  reaches  down  to  the 
deepest  fountain  of  his  Genius,  and  which 
can  no  longer  masquerade  in  any  alien  form, 
but  must  utter  his  own  self  in  its  native  re- 
ality. 

Minna  Herzlieb,  however,  rouses  in  the 
poet  not  only  a  reminiscence  of  his  former 
love,  but  she  is  also  an  immediate  presence 
here  and  now,  which  starts  him  to  creation 
in  her  own  right.  Hence  the  direct  work 
which  she  inspires  on  the  spot  is  the  Elective 
Affinities.  But  that  is  not  all:  she  gives  to 
poet  the  key-note  of  this  whole  Third  Period, 
and  will,  so  to  speak,  reproduce  her  own  es- 
sential part  in  two  later  shapes  of  women, 
each  of  whom  will  be  also  epochal.  Thus  she 
is  a  prelude  of  the  future  as  well  as  a  rem- 


MINNA  HERZLIEB.  523 

iniscence  of  the  past ;  also  she  is  the  fountain 
of  the  present  in  the  poet's  activity. 

Her  Epoch  lasts  some  six  or  seven  years, 
in  fact  till  it  inpinges  upon  that  of  Marianne 
Willemer  in  1814-15.  According  to  his  re- 
porting friend  Boisseree  Goethe  still  in  1815 
recalled  his  love  for  Ottilia  (Minna)  with 
much  emotion,  and  told  how  unhappy  she 
had  made  him  (for  he  had  to  renounce  her), 
till  "at  last  his  speech  became  wholly  enig- 
matic, and  full  of  strange  premonitions." 
There  is  no  doubt  that  his  novel,  Elective  Af- 
finities is  the  record  of  his  present  experi- 
ence. He  writes  long  afterward  to  Zelter: 
"There  is  not  a  stroke  in  the  book  which  I 
have  not  lived,  but  it  is  not  given  as  I  lived 
it. ' '  Another  declaration  of  his  may  be  noted 
in  this  connection :  ' '  The  use  of  my  personal 
experiences  has  been  everything  to  me;  to 
invent  out  of  nothing  was  never  my  business ; 
I  have  always  regarded  the  world  as  gifted 
with  a  greater  genius  than  mine."  With 
these  indications  of  the  author  in  our  mem- 
ory we  may  take  a  glance  at  his  novel  of 
Minna  Herzlieb,  though  here  again  he  throws 
a  disguise  over  his  love  as  not  reminiscent  of 
long-ago  but  as  actually  present  in  full  tide 
of  its  energy. 


524       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 


I. 

Elective  Affinities. 

Grip  this  book  at  its  center  and  we  shall 
find  love  ensconced  there  as  the  subtle  demi- 
urge who  is  undermining  legal  marriage  and 
thus  producing  a  tragic  conflict.  Was  that 
Goethe's  compelling  experience  when  he 
wrote  it?  Would  he  have  touched  pen  to 
paper  unless  he  could  have  recorded  himself 
at  an  ultimate  crisis  of  his  own  destiny!  Not 
unless  we  wish  to  discredit  his  hundredth  as- 
sertion to  that  effect. 

The  theme  is  the  elemental  power  of  love 
—just  the  poet's  primordial  endowment  of 
Nature — in  its  conflict  with  man's  basic  insti- 
tution, the  Family.  Hence  he  takes  the  action 
of  the  four  chemical  elements  as  a  symbol  to 
prefigure  the  four  human  characters — two 
men  and  two  women— who  are  in  a  state  of 
decomposition  and  recomposition.  An  orig- 
inal elemental  force  of  Nature  is  at  work  in 
each  of  them  sapping  man's  instituted  order. 
Thus  the  novel  reaches  down  to  the  funda- 
mental collision  which  runs  through  the  rise 
of  all  human  society  from  the  very  beginning. 
And  it  is  also  the  basic  struggle  of  Goethe's 
own  individual  existence,  as  we  have  watched 
him  in  the  unfolding  of  his  life-poem,  of 


4. 

ELECTIVE  AFFINITIES.  525 

which  it  is  the  ever-recurring  pulse-beat;  it 
is  the  self  renewing  conflict  of  Phileros,  the 
lover  of  Love  from  boyhood  to  old-age.  Here, 
accordingly,  lies  before  us  one  pivotal  stage 
of  his  perennial  battle. 

Edward  and  Charlotte,  the  married  pair, 
are  getting  along  well  enough  humanly  con- 
sidered, when  upon  the  scene  is  brought  the 
unmarried  pair,  the  Captain  and  Ottilia. 
Then  the  mutual  disarrangement  and  rear- 
rangement of  the  two  pairs  sets  in,  each  per- 
son being  driven  by  an  unconscious  unwilled 
force  of  Nature  into  a  new  and  deeper  affinity 
in  violation  of  the  established  legal  relation. 
Now  in  this  furious  cross-fire  of  passion, 
Charlotte  the  married  wife  and  the  unmar- 
ried Captain  do  not  succumb  to  Nature's  ele- 
mental stroke,  though  they  feel  it  with  no 
little  energy.  On  the  contrary  Edward  yields 
to  the  fateful  impulse  and  is  tragic,  involv- 
ing in  his  net  of  destiny  Ottilia  guiltless  but 
crushed  by  the  inner  might  of  her  conflict. 

Goethe  himself  had  done  like  Edward,  had 
followed  the  immediate  push  of  Nature,  defy- 
ing the  institution  and  its  law,  and  celebrating 
his  disobedience  in  a  reckless  exuberance  of 
fancy  as  we  have  noted  in  his  Roman  Elegies. 
But  in  the  two  decades  since  then,  the  insti- 
tution has  given  him  a  memorable  lesson, 
society  has  disowned  his  wife  and  branded 


526       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

his  son  born  out  of  wedlock  with  a  stigma  the 
more  terrible  because  its  object  was  guilt- 
less. The  poet's  act  of  legitimating  his  out- 
lawed family  could  not  evitate  its  tragic 
doom.  So  he  mirrors  his  own  lot  in  advance 
by  the  fate  of  Edward. 

Ottilia  is  portrayed  also  as  the  bearer  of 
this  elemental  passion,  but  she  resists  it,  be- 
ing aware  of  its  bent  toward  ethical  violation. 
She  manifests  the  native  power  of  love  in 
woman  and  excites  its  emotional  response 
unconsciously  wherever  she  comes  in  contact 
with  men.  Moreover  the  author  connects  her 
peculiar  gift  with  certain  hidden  forces 
which  are  working  far  down  in  Nature's  lab- 
oratory, and  which  seem  to  give  her  a  mys- 
terious control  over  the  human  heart.  Goe- 
the is  here  looking  at  himself  and  trying  to 
account  for  the  all-coercing  influence  which 
gentle,  slight,  weak-willed  Minna  Herzlieb 
propels  through  his  whole  being  by  her  mere 
presence.  The  poet  also  forefeels  and  fore- 
tells her  tragedy  long  before  it  occurred  ac- 
tually, in  the  fate  of  Ottilia.  But  his  counter- 
part Edward  he  does  not  endow  with  his  own 
fate-challenging  gift  of  utterance,  and  hence 
the  poor  weakling  sinks  down  under  his  own 
deed,  or  rather  his  lack  of  the  man-making 
deed,  at  the  close. 

Both  parents,  Edward  and  Charlotte,  ap- 


. 
ELECTIVE  AFFINITIES.  527 

pear  not  to  have  oared  much  for  their  off- 
spring born  inside  the  law  but  outside  of 
love.  Here  Goethe  must  have  thought  of  his 
own  child  born  outside  the  law  but  inside  of 
love.  At  any  rate  he  makes  the  legitimate 
infant  fated  through  the  unlove  of  its  beget- 
ters, even  if  it  perishes  by  a  seeming  acci- 
dent. Ottilia  who  has  mothered  it,  tries  to 
save  it,  but  destiny  is  stronger,  and  at  last 
grips  both  the  babe  and  herself.  But  how 
about  the  poet's  own  deed  whose  outcome 
was  the  unlawful  child — was  it  too  fated? 
Already  we  have  noted  his  grinding  anxiety. 
In  this  connection  we  may  cite  the  words  of 
one  of  the  novel's  characters  (Mittler)  who 
evidently  voices  the  confession  of  Goethe  at 
this  period:  "Who  ever  attacks  the  mar- 
riage relation, "  is  a  man  who  assails  ' l  the  be- 
ginning and  culmination  of  civilized  society." 
Verily  our  Goethe  has  become  institutional 
through  his  bitter  experience,  and  we  may 
hear  him  say  still  further :  i  i  Whoever  under- 
mines this  basis  of  all  social  order  through 
his  word,  aye  through  his  deed" — such  a 
man  has  been  just  myself  but  is  no  longer: 
so  we  catch  his  indirect  confession  which  the 
reader  will  feel  like  interjecting  at  this  point 
in  his  narrative. 

There  is  little  doubt  that  Goethe  in  these 
spontaneous  actions  of  Ottilia    intended    to 


528       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

suggest  what  was  that  inborn  power  of  hers 
which  seemed  to  win  every  man  who  glanced 
into  her  face:  maternal  love.  She  looked  it, 
acted  it,  created  its  atmosphere  about  her; 
thus  she  was  endowed  with  the  elemental  na- 
ture of  women  as  the  primal  source  of  hu- 
manity. Nor  can  we  hesitate  to  think  that 
Goethe  therein  transferred  to  her  what  he 
deemed  the  ultimate  attraction  in  the  char- 
acter of  Minna  Herzlieb.  We  recollect  that 
this  same  trait  was  doubtless  the  deepest  link 
which  held  him  so  long  to  Frau  Von-  Stein. 
And  his  own  mother  claimed  for  her  mater- 
nity the  chief  crown  of  her  existence.  More- 
over the  poet  along  the  same  line  transforms 
Ottilia  into  a  sort  of  Madonna,  suggesting 
the  Divine  Mother  with  her  mediatorial 
power  in  the  case  of  trouble  and  disease. 

But  for  the  poet  himself  there  is  one  pe- 
culiar word  which  winds  through  the  novel: 
renunciation.  He  is  a  Titanic  lover  again, 
going  back  to  his  Frankfort  Epoch;  yet  he 
also  knows  that  he  must  renounce.  Not  only 
his  time  of  life,  but  his  conviction  in  regard 
to  the  institution  demands  the  subordination 
of  his  elemental  passion.  Because  of  its  sub- 
ject the  book  has  often  been  denounced  as 
immoral ;  but  the  deepest  strain  of  its  mean- 
ing is  institutional,  enforcing  the  lesson  of 
violation  through  tragedy.  Here  again  we 


.i- 

THE  APHORISTIC  GOETHE.  529 

may  read  Goethe's  confession  at  this  node  of 
his  life-poem.  He  can  still  feel  the  volcanic 
upheaval  of  youthful  love,  but  upon  it  falls 
the  counter  stroke  of  the  old  man's  resigna- 
tion. 

This  novel  is  the  most  thoroughly  unified 
and  most  carefully  constructed  of  all  Goe- 
the's larger  works.  Moreover  it  was  writ- 
ten at  a  gush  and  is  not  the  result  of  a  ladder- 
like  evolution  of  many  years,  such  as  are 
Meister  and  Faust.  To  compose  it  Goethe 
ran  off  to  Jena  and  practically  hid  himself 
till  it  was  done  (in  the  summer  of  1809). 
Such  concentration  shows  his  coercive  need 
of  utterance  for  relief.  Next  we  are  to  see 
this  internally  smelted  unity  of  form  and 
matter  exploding  into  a  thousand  scintillas. 


II. 

The  Aphoristic  Goethe. 

Thus  we  may  name  an  important  and  per- 
sistent strain  of  Goethe's  complete  life-po- 
em, which  culminates  in  the  present  Epoch. 
The  best  commentator  on  this  art-form  of 
the  poet,  namely  Loeper,  declares  that  Goe- 
the has  his  distinctive,  aphoristic  year,  which 
was  1814,  quite  as  he  has  his  special  ballad- 


530       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

year  in  1797.  The  tendency  to  express  his 
immediate  state  of  mind  in  short  snappy  sen- 
tences or  aphorisms  belongs  to  his  whole  life, 
though  it  took  various  forms.  One  of  his 
friends  records  him  as  saying  that  the  events 
of  the  day  passing  through  his  soul  would 
often  explode  of  themselves  into  versicles. 
Such  utterances  might  take  the  form  of  the 
proverb ;  indeed  the  collection  of  them  in  his 
works  constitutes  the  greatest,  deepest  and 
most  comprehensive  of  all  proverbial  philos- 
ophies. Goethe  loved  the  proverb,  the  pithy 
worldly-wisdom  of  the  people,  and  often 
translated  and  transformed  old  samples  of  it 
coming  down  the  ages. 

In  general  his  aphoristic  manner  is  a  sud- 
den spirt  from  his  underworld,  and  shows 
quite  every  phase  of  his  native  Genius.  It 
perpetuates  his  youthful  outbursts  breaking 
up  into  the  placid  stream  of  his  old-age.  And 
many  of  them  are  protests  against  the  ten- 
dencies of  the  time,  literary,  scientific,  polit- 
ical, and  carry  a  quick  sharp  sting.  Thus 
they  too  have  in  them  a  reminiscence  of  his 
early  period  and  frequently  bear  a  tinge  of 
Titanism.  Compared  to  his  Elective  Affini- 
ties, which  is  one  of  his  most  concentrated 
and  most  carefully  organized  books,  his 
aphorisms  are  scattered  irregular  fire-works 
shooting  in  all  directions.  Each  of  them  on 


.*• 

THE  APHORISTIC  GOETHE.  531 

the  whole  is  individualized,  and  demands  its 
own  special  interpretation.  Thus  they  rep- 
resent the  single  atoms  of  the  one  great  or- 
ganism of  Goethe's  life-poem,  they  are  the 
primordial  units,  or  perchance,  thought-cells 
of  which  his  Genius  built  its  edifice.  Spe- 
cially characteristic  of  his  Third  Period  is 
this  atomizing  of  his  creativity;  we  should 
note  that  even  into  the  close  texture  of 
Elective  Affinities  bursts  up  the  gnomic  jets 
of  Ottilia's  diary.  Something  of  the  same 
sort,  but  less  pronounced  we  find  already  in 
Meister's  Apprenticeship,  especially  in  the 
so-called  Indenture. 

Such  aphorisms  will  hardly  bear  connected 
reading,  because  their  nature  is  disconnec- 
tion itself.  The  poet  compels  the  reader  to 
make  of  his  mind  a  microscope,  in  whose  field 
is  held  for  minute  examination  the  wee  bright 
particle  of  molecular  Genius.  Our  excellent 
editorial  guide,  Loeper,  has  counted  and  an- 
notated "more  than  eight  hundred "  such 
poems.  To  these  rhymed  aphorisms  are  to  be 
added  the  ' '  Sayings  in  Prose, ' '  of  which  more 
than  a  thousand  have  been  published,  maxims 
and  reflections  on  Art,  Nature,  Ethics.  They 
show  the  material  of  his  works  as  yet  unor- 
ganized, and  give  us  many  a  peep  into  the 
author's  work  shop,  with  fleeting  glimpses  of 
his  world-view  reflected  in  multitudinous 


532       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

facets.  Really  they  reveal  to  us  the  proto- 
plasmic Goethe,  yeasting  from  his  own 
sources  and  gathering  from  all  quarters, 
quite  unformed  yet  getting  ready  to  shoot 
into  crystals.  Let  us  mark  that  they  are  not 
fragments  of  great  works  left  unfinished, 
such  as  we  find  in  his  Frankfort  Epoch;  they 
reach  below  all  the  drifting  torsos  of  his  life- 
poem,  and  show  us  the  rudimentary  germs  of 
his  creation,  the  very  embryology  of  his 
Genius. 

The  most  extensive  as  well  as  the  most  im- 
portant part  of  these  aphoristic  treasures  is 
embraced  under  the  rubric  of  Tame  Xenia 
contrasting  evidently  with  the  Xenia  of  the 
Goethe-Schiller  Epoch  which  must  have  been 
untamed  in  comparison,  more  bitter  and  per- 
sonal. Chiefly,  however,  there  is  a  striking 
difference  of  form;  the  antique  measure  is 
dropped  and  the  Teutonic  rhymed  epigram 
takes  its  place,  wherein  is  indicated  that  the 
poet's  classic  Period  is  definitely  transcend- 
ed. Twenty  years  ago  he  would  have  writ- 
ten these  epigrams  in  the  hexametral  elegiac 
meter,  for  he  was  then  in  the  full  poetic  over- 
flow of  his  Greek  mood.  But  now  he  epi- 
grammatizes  himself  and  the  world  in  the 
native  verse  of  his  folk,  to  which  he  has  re- 
turned. In  our  judgment  no  part  of  Goe- 
the's works  is  subtler,  more  self -revealing, 


THE  APHORISTIC  GOETHE.  533 

or  contains  so  many  gold  nuggets,  but  you 
have  to  dig. 

Though  Goethe  has  evolved  beyond  his 
classicism,  he  is  still  tempted  to  write  a  dra- 
ma in  the  antique  form  and  measure,  yet  with 
a  modern  content.  This  is  known  in  his 
works  as  the  Awakening  of  Epimenides.  In 
spite  of  striking  passages,  it  was  a  failure 
since  it  ran  counter  to  the  sweep  of  his 
Genius,  and  he  undertook  to  concoct  some- 
thing which  he  had  not  experienced.  Still  as 
a  failure  it  has  an  interest  in  the  life-poem 
of  Goethe ;  it  is  suggestive  as  a  warning,  and 
may  be  looked  at  as  a  sign-board  pointing 
out  whither  he  was  not  to  go.  So  the  great 
poet  who  here  turns  down  his  former  hero 
Napoleon,  suffers  his  Moscow  defeat  in  the 
act. 

But  hardly  is  this  aberration  over  when 
Goethe  by  way  of  reaction,  leaps  into  his  na- 
tive element,  and  our  Phileros,  the  lover  of 
Love  breaks  forth  with  a  new  sunburst  of  his 
primordial  poetic  Self.  It  is  recorded  that 
in  July,  1814,  he  concluded  after  several 
months  of  travail  his  awakening  of  the  aged, 
hoary  Epimenides,  who  never  did  get  really 
awake  in  spite  of  the  desperate  proddings  of 
the  poet's  pen-point.  Then  he  hurried  away 
on  a  trip  to  Ehineland  where  he  first  saw 
Marianne  Jung  soon  to  become  Marianne 


534       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

Willemer  by  marriage.  The  date  of  this  first 
sight  of  a  woman  who  again  started  the 
whirlpool  of  his  elemental  love  is  duly  doc- 
umented as  August  5,  1814.  So  we  are 
whelmed  into  another  passionate  Epoch  of 
his  life-poem,  with  its  round  of  volcanic  emo- 
tion, poetic  utterance  and  confession,  which 
bring  alleviation  and  final  quiescence,  but 
only  after  a  time  of  throeful  renunciation. 
For  both  the  man  and  the  woman  are  mar- 
ried already,  and  thus  re-enact  the  tragic 
conflict  of  Elective  Affinities,  but  without  the 
tragedy,  let  the  Lord  be  thanked.  For  we 
are  getting  interested  to  see  if  the  old  man 
can  have  still  another  upburst  of  his  youthful 
passion,  with  its  accompanying  pyrotechnics 
of  love  poetry.  Just  hear  him  sing  a  line  to 
his  gray  hair: 
Dock  wirst  du  lieben. 


MARIANNE  WILLEMER.  535 


CHAPTER  EIGHTH. 

MARIANNE  WILLEMER. 

She  was  already  in  her  thirtieth  year  when 
she  suddenly  entered  this  epochal  moment  of 
all  her  days,  and  Goethe  was  just  rounding 
his  sixty-fifth  year.  Thus  she  was  not  ex- 
actly young,  nor  without  some  experience  of 
life,  for  she  had  passed  her  early  teens  as  an 
actress,  who  could  also  dance  and  sing  on  the 
stage  with  much  applause,  The  Frankfort 
banker  Willemer  had  become  interested  in 
her,  and  when  she  was  sixteen  had  removed 
her  from  her  uncertain  theatrical  environ- 
ment to  his  home,  where  she  was  reared  along 
with  his  own  daughters.  Now  the  curious 
fact  peeps  out  mid  surmises  that  a  few  days 
after  Goethe  first  saw  her,  Willemer  mar- 
ries her,  though  she  had  been  an  inmate  of 
his  household  some  fourteen  years,  and  he 
had  reached  the  age  of  fifty-four.  Goe- 
the was  invited  to  the  wedding;  he  found, 
however,  a  good  excuse  for  keeping  away. 
But  the  obstacle  of  marriage,  if  it  was  de- 
signed to  be  such,  never  stopped  the  untamed 
cyclone  of  love  when  it  once  got  under  way; 
it  had  to  whirl  out  its  course  to  a  finish. 


536       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

It  should  not  be  omitted  that  Willemer  had 
a  widowed  daughter,  Rosette  by  name,  who 
was  living  with  him  at  this  time,  and  who  also 
appears  to  have  been  fascinated  by  the  poet. 
She  has  left  a  description  of  him:  "What  a 
man,  and  what  feelings  move  me ! ' 9  He  is  a 
"unique  nature,  one  cannot  help  loving  him, 
and  entirely  confiding  in  him."  Indeed  Ro- 
sette seems  to  rival  Marianne  at  times  in  her 
attentions  to  the  poet,  but  any  outbreak  of 
jealousy  between  the  daughter  and  her  step- 
mother must  be  left  to  each  reader's  view  of 
human  nature  under  the  circumstances.  Still 
there  was  quite  a  little  cross-fire  of  the  Love- 
God  in  that  country  residence  of  Willemer 
called  not  without  some  hidden  adaptation 
the  Tannery  (Gerbermuhle)  where  Goe- 
the was  staying.  Such  an  environment,  how- 
ever, our  Phileros,  when  obsessed  by  his  ele- 
mental mood,  was  apt  to  call  up  about  him 
any  where. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  two  souls  who 
had  found  each  other  out  in  the  rapture  of 
creative  love,  which  at  once  had  to  seek  utter- 
ance in  poetry  from  both  the  man  and  woman 
— they  were  Goethe  and  Marianne.  Herein 
she  differs  from  all  the  others  of  her  sex 
listed  in  Goethe 's  calendar  of  love :  she  pos- 
sessed the  poetic  gift  in  a  high  degree,  and 
she  was  capable  of  being  so  inoculated  with 


MARIANNE  WILLEMER.  537 

his  Genius  that  she  could  equal  if  not  sur- 
pass him  in  his  own  sovereign  line  of  soulful 
song.  Very  different  was  she  in  this  respect 
from  her  predecessor,  the  tender,  slender 
Minna,  who  had  no  pecular  spiritual  dower 
except  the  unconscious  magic  of  her  maid- 
enly personality.  But  Marianne  we  cannot 
conceive  without  a  certain  self-assertion  and 
self-awareness  of  her  power ;  she  dared  enter 
the  lists  with  the  world-famous  poet  and  en- 
gage him  in  a  tournament  of  verse  on  his  own 
ground;  but  what  is  most  remarkable,  she 
carried  off  the  prize.  Thus  Phileros  has 
found  a  new  woman,  perchance  just  the  new 
woman  who  keeps  step  with  him  in  his  own 
passion,  and  at  the  same  time  challenges  him 
to  the  highest  expression  of  his  art.  She 
shrank  not  in  awe  at  the  presence  of  the 
great  man,  but  she  faced  him  as  an  equal,  be- 
ing able  to  requite  not  only  his  love,  but  his 
Genius  at  its  topmost  creative  bent.  No  won- 
der that  Goethe  called  her  "the  little  Blii- 
che-r"  in  admiration  of  her  heroic  daring 
against  himself. 

But  it  is  time  to  designate  the  chief  poetic 
fruit  of  this  Epoch  in  whose  heart  we  have 
not  only  to  see  the  form  but  to  hear  the  voice 
of  Marianne  Willemer. 


538       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

I. 

The  West-Eastern  Divan. 

Not  to  our  mind  a  happy  title  for  such  a 
poetic  product,  though  we  feel  no  call  to  se- 
lect another  in  its  stead.  Still  its  doubleness 
has  its  purport  for  the  present  Period,  as  has 
been  already  noted  of  Truth  and  Fiction. 
Goethe  is  here  seen  orientalizing  himself,  or 
trying  to  do  so,  for  the  contribution  of  the 
East  runs  not  very  deep  or  strong  in  his 
work.  It  is  German  in  its  meter  except  a 
few  desultory  imitations,  German  in  its 
spirit,  in  its  love,  in  its  scenery,  despite  some 
pencil  strokes  from  the  land  of  the  desert  and 
of  camels.  The  poet  in  this  case  never  saw 
the  poet's  land,  never  looked  on  the  real  Sul- 
leika  of  the  harem  or  her  folk ;  never  had  the 
Oriental  experience  except  through  books. 
Hence  his  present  poetic  transformation  was 
very  superficial  compared  to  that  which  he 
got  from  Italy  and  the  classic  world.  Really 
there  was  no  second  birth  of  the  spirit  here, 
no  Oriental  palingenesis  in  this  Epoch.  To 
be  sure  he  sings  somewhat  of  the  Prophet 
and  the  Koran,  but  their  religion  is  rather 
his  poetic  plaything  than  his  serious  world- 
view.  His  style  is  not  that  of  Oriental  poetry, 
with  its  metaphorical  rainbows  and  tortuous 
arabesques  of  fantastic  forms;  rather  it  is 


THE  WEST-EASTERN  DIVAN.  539 

classic  in  its  simplicity  and  directness.  Joy- 
ously the  poet  is  at  home  in  his  native  Rhine- 
land,  which  he  is  now  visiting  and  in  whose 
environment  he  is  composing  most  of  these 
poems.  Its  wine  he  is  drinking  in  disregard 
of  the  Mohammedan  law,  even  if  Persian 
Hafiz  set  the  example.  The  scrupulous  Occi- 
dental reader  may  think  that  his  love  is  the 
most  Oriental  thing  about  him,  showing  a 
streak  of  polygamy  in  the  fact  that  he  has  a 
wife  sitting  at  home  during  all  this  poetic 
effervescence  over  Marianne. 

With  many  a  keen  thrust  does  our  Jesuit 
Pater  Baumgartner  plunge  the  dagger  of  his 
Mephistophelean  sarcasm  into  this  new  love- 
book  of  our  Phileros.  He  says  that  "from 
an  old  man,  husband,  father,  statesman,  sa- 
vant, the  first  genius  of  all  Germany,  we  had 
a  right  to  expect  something  better  than  that 
he  should  sit  down  under  the  tree  of  his 
youth  and  start  to  piping  again  seductive 
love-ditties. "  A  very  undignified  business 
at  least  it  is  for  such  a  lofty  dignitary,  with 
his  ever-recurring  refrain  about  wine,  women 
and  song,  which  grates  infernal  discord  on 
the  monastic  ear  of  Anti-Phileros.  Cer- 
tainly the  latter  has  good  ground  for  com- 
plaint. But  listen  to  a  sharper  swis.h  of  his 
daggered  words:  "The  poet  (Goethe)  here 
affirms  amatory  song  to  be  his  supreme  call- 


540       GOETHE' 'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

ing,  in  which  his  sensual  glow  flames  up  into 
lust-drunk  images,  while  the  strains  ad- 
dressed to  his  cup-bearer  are  companioned 
with  Oriental  harem-love,  and  show  a  nuance 
of  pederasty,  till  at  last  in  Paradise  the 
houris  float  around  the  poet  with  their  fe- 
licity." Thus  the  wire-edged  tongue  of  the 
priest  slashes  this  Divan  for  its  voluptuous 
Orientalism,  not  without  justice.  But  how 
can  the  celibate  love  any  love,  even  the  mon- 
ogamous, which  he  has  holily  abjured,  not 
to  speak  of  the  polygamous?  Still  less  can 
he  love  our  Phileros,  the  lover  of  love,  poet- 
izing his  master-passion  in  thousandfold 
witchery,  both  bidden  and  forbidden. 

Now  there  is  no  denying  that  the  poet  by 
the  magic  of  his  art  has  overspread  his  work 
with  an  Oriental  atmosphere,  very  hazy  in- 
deed and  intangible,  but  subtly  poetic  and 
entrancing.  To  be  sure  his  muse  does  not 
embrace  the  whole  Orient;  India  and  China 
are  left  out  though  he  has  touched  both  else- 
where ;  Judea,  too,  is  eschewed  in  spite  of  his 
early  biblical  associations.  Persia  is  the 
land  of  the  Divan,  and  to  a  less  extent  Arabia 
with  its  religious  consciousness.  Chiefly  the 
reading  (in  1813-14)  of  the  Persian  poet 
Hafiz  in  Von  Hammer's  translation  furnished 
his  dominant  Oriental  motive.  He  became 
absorbed  in  that -far-off  poetic  world,  so  re- 


THE  WEST-EASTERN  DIVAN.  541 

mote  in  place,  time  and  social  order,  and 
sought  to  reproduce  and  relive  it  in  his 
spirit.  Moreover  he  was  driven  to  take  flight 
to  the  distant  Orient  through  the  fresh  tur- 
moil produced  by  the  Napoleonic  wars  in 
Europe  during  1814-15;  then  the  increasing 
wretchedness  of  his  own  household  made  him 
flee  from  home  to  wineland  and  loveland  for 
the  rescue  of  his  supreme  vocation.  Thus  he 
was  scourged  in  imagination  out  of  Europe 
by  political  and  domestic  demons,  and  be- 
came ideally  a  fugitive  to  the  Orient  though 
really  his  flight  turned  westward  to  the 
near-by  Rhine  valley  with  its  wonderful  care- 
drowning  grapevines  full  of  poetic  fluidity,  to 
which  was  added  the  miraculous  epiphany  of 
the  Love-God. 

-The  Divan  as  a  whole  is  a  phasis  of  the 
aphoristic  Goethe,  whose  general  character 
has  already  been  considered.  The  book  is 
made  up  of  several  hundred  short  poems 
which  are  mostly  constructed  and  tempered 
like  the  Tame  Xenia,  being  brief  aphorisms, 
the  peculiar  art-form  dominating  the  old-age 
of  the  poet.  Moreover  this  art-form  harmo- 
nizes well  with  the  sentential  wisdom  which 
we  couple  with  the  Oriental  sages,  and  easily 
takes  the  hazy  atmosphere  of  Goethe's  East. 
This  somewhat  protoplasmic  mass  of  aphor- 
isms is  divided  into  twelve  Books  rather  ex- 


542       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

ternally  by  the  author,  since  some  of  their 
rubrics  may  mean  quite  the  same  thing  or 
indeed  anything.  The  question  has  arisen: 
does  Goethe  orientalize  Germany  or  german- 
ize  the  Orient?  The  process  is  somewhat  of 
both  ways ;  still  the  inner  is  essentially  Teu- 
tonic, while  the  outer  is  partly  but  by  no 
means  exclusively  Oriental  (or  Persian).  The 
whole  is  a  collection  of  atomic  versicles, 
showing  sometimes  a  brief  connection,  but 
without  any  pervasive  structural  organism. 
Now  out  of  this  poetical  conglomerate  rises 
up  a  group  of  lyrics,  which  bears  a  distinc- 
tive character  in  contrast  with  the  rest  of  the 
Divan.  It  is  called  the  Book  of  Suleika 
(VIII)  and  is  the  joint  product  of  the  two 
lovers,  Goethe  and  Marianne  (Persianized  in 
names  as  Hatem  and  Suleika).  It  is  the  re^al 
Book  of  Love  recording  the  mutual  passion 
of  the  man  and  woman,  and  written  right  in 
the  fire  of  their  white-hot  experience.  Now 
the  surprising  fact  is  that  the  poems  of  the 
woman  are  the  better,  more  deeply  and  sin- 
cerely intoned,  than  those  of  the  man,  more 
love-lorn  and  heart-broken,  though  she  never 
thought  of  dying  of  a  broken  heart.  Her 
love  trickles  into  tender  words  more  spon- 
taneous and  self -giving,  as  if  it  was  her  very 
first ;  while  we  feel  that  Goethe  is  an  old  and 
somewhat  hardened  lover  who  has  made 


THE  WEST-EASTERN  DIVAN.  543 

many  a  campaign  before  this,  so  that  he 
knows  all  about  it,  and  cannot  let  himself  go 
so  naively  and  unbosomingly.  In  the  orig- 
inal edition  her  poems  were  published  under 
his  name,  and  the  secret  of  her  authorship 
was  not  revealed  till  after  her  death  in  1860, 
and  then  but  partially.  To  this  day  their 
respective  portions  cannot  be  fully  distin- 
guished, especially  in  the  Book  Suleika,  which 
she  not  only  inspired  but  helped  create.  It 
would  seem  that  the  mated  songsters  often 
sang  in  rivalry,  each  contributing  a  verse  to 
the  same  poem  or  even  a  line,  somewhat  as 
Goethe  and  Schiller  once  did  in  composing 
the  Xenia.  Still  the  most  heartfelt  genuine 
lyric  in  the  Divan  is  wholly  the  work  of  Mari- 
anne (VIII,  42).  But  she,  though  a  gifted 
versifier,  never  reached  the  same  height  be- 
fore or  afterward;  Goethe's  love  made  her  a 
genius  not  only  beyond  herself  but  even  be- 
yond himself  at  her  one  supreme  moment. 
That  was  indeed  among  the  poet's  peculiar 
gifts ;  he  often  inoculated  the  lesser  brain 
with  his  own  creative  power,  as  if  he  could 
tap  the  eternal  sources  not  solely  for  him- 
self but  also  for  others,  especially  by  his 
spoken  word  and  his  presence. 

But  the  time  comes  for  the  final  bitter 
word:  renunciation.  Goethe  knows  that  he 
has  reached  the  jumping-off  edge  of  the 


544       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART   THIRD. 

abyss;  he  looks  over,  then  turns  and  flees 
back  toward  dull  prosaic  Weimar  and  Chris- 
tiane,  from  bright  poetic  Khineland  and 
Marianne,  after  sending  to  her  a  dark  hint- 
ful  letter  in  which  he  speaks  of  "a  chasm 
which  he  must  now  close. "  His  traveling 
companion  has  left  on  record  that  "he  was 
terribly  broken  up  and  could  not  sleep. ' '  He 
had  two  love-seasons  at  the  Willemers,  in 
1814  and  1815 ;  yet  in  July  1816  his  longing 
drove  him  irresistibly  to  make  a  start  for  yet 
another,  but  a  few  miles  outside  of  Weimar 
his  carriage  upset,  and  he  turned  back,  obey- 
ing his  strong  premonition  that  he  had  re- 
ceived a  providential  warning.  He  never 
saw  Marianne  again,  yet  her  complacent  hus- 
band visited  Goethe  at  Weimar,  but  without 
his  peerless,  though  perilous  spouse. 

A  new  shift  of  destiny  took  place  when  in 
June,  1816,  Christiane  passed  beyond,  and  the 
widowed  Goethe  at  the  age  of  67  was  thrown 
back  into  the  unmarried  freedom  of  youth. 


II. 

The  New  House  of  Tantalus. 

Meanwhile  into  this  bright  exuberant  love- 
life  of  our  Phileros  was  spinning  that  other 
dark  tragic  thread  of  destiny  of  which  we 


THE  NEW  HOUSE  OF  TANTALUS.  545 

have  already  sighted  ominous  appearances. 
The  two  strands,  indeed,  have  the  strange 
propulsion  to  wind  alongside  of  each  other 
through  the  poet's  whole  career  as  spring- 
ing from  the  same  elemental  source  of  his 
deepest  being;  the  violation  of  Tantalus  is 
still  at  work  and  is  slowly  marching  toward 
the  doomed  retribution. 

The  years  1816-17  constitute  a  pivotal  era 
in  the  family  of  Goethe.  Christiane  was  the 
first  to  vanish,  perchance  more  sinned  against 
than  sinning;  but  her  sinning  was  not  mea- 
ger as  she  flung  herself  over  to  drink,  dance 
and  death.  Goethe  had  evidently  given  her 
up,  and  ran  off  from  a  hopeless  problem, 
seeking  love,  the  prime  need  of  his  existence, 
away  from  home,  for  we  have  to  remember 
that  Christiane  was  dying  of  a  slow  but  mor- 
tal malady  while  his  affair  with  Marianne 
was  going  on.  Still  his  diary  shows  that  he 
was  near  her  during  her  closing  hours.  But 
report  has  handed  down  that  August  could 
not  be  induced  to  go  to  the  bedside  of  his  de- 
parting mother.  In  her  final  illness  "she 
was  unable  to  speak,  having  bitten  her  tongue 
through"  (letter  of  Madam  Schopenhauer 
who  gives  other  horrible  details  of  Christi- 
ane 's  last  moments,  possibly  exaggerated). 
Warmly  defended,  hotly  censured,  the  hum- 
ble folk-girl  is  destined  to  be  for  all  time, 


546       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  THIRD. 

having  become  a  world-known  character 
through  her  wifehood  with  a  Genius  and  es- 
pecially through  her  motherhood  of  the 
House  of  Tantalus.  Who  wishes  to  judge 
her!  We  do  not,  though  we  have  to  put  her 
into  her  place  in  the  doomful  evolution  of 
Goethe's  life-poem.  At  least  so  much  may 
he  said  of  her :  she  was  no  Fate-compeller,  her 
lot  was  too  much  for  her,  and  down  she  went 
in  the  sweep  of  her  own  deed,  which  she  pos- 
sessed not  the  power  to  meet  and  undo. 

After  her  death  there  was  a  reconstruction 
of  Goethe's  household,  since  Christiane 
seems  to  have  been  regarded  as  the  curse- 
laden,  doom-bringing  member  upon  whom  the 
first  stroke  of  the  avenging  Parcas  fell.  There 
can  be  little  doubt  that  Goethe,  forefeeling 
the  nemesis  in  his  family  as  it  had  gone  hith- 
erto, resolved  to  raise  a  bulwark  against  the 
lowering  menace.  The  central  difficulty  lay 
in  his  son,  now  some  twenty-six  years  old,  in 
whom  he  must  have  already  noticed  the  fatal 
birth-marks  of  the  House  of  Tantalus.  All 
Weimar  knew,  and  the  father  must  have 
known,  too,  that  the  son  for  years  had  been 
addicted  to  intemperance  and  incontinence, 
a  double  inheritance  from  both  parents,  in- 
tensified by  his  spotted  social  position.  The 
anxious  father  must  have  asked,  looking 
backwards  and  forwards :  Can  I  forestall  the 


THE  NEW  HOUSE  OF  TANTALUS.  547 

consequences  of  my  deed,  and  ward  off  the 
clutch  of  Fate  from  mine  own!  At  any  rate 
the  old  Goethe  resolves  to  re-constitute  his 
family  by  the  legal  marriage  of  his  son  to  a 
woman  who  might  be  able  to  rescue  his  blood 
from  the  lot  of  a  Tantalid.  Thus  his  descend- 
ants would  be  born  in  an  institutional  order, 
and  restored  to  their  legitimate  social  sta- 
tion. So  he  thought  to  counteract  his  primal 
violation  and  save  his  House  from  its  over- 
hanging doom. 

Can  he  thus  reverse  the  rushing  wheels  of 
Time!  Much  depends  upon  the  woman  se- 
lected for  this  task.  Ottilia  Von  Pogwish  was 
of  noble  stock,  her  mother  had  been  divorced 
from  her  husband,  a  Prussian  officer,  and  the 
daughter  had  enjoyed  little  domestic  train- 
ing. She,  at  the  age  of  21,  was  married  to 
August  Goethe,  June  17,  1817,  who  was  then 
reported  to  have  been  deeply  in  love  with  a 
folk-girl,  but  of  such  a  union  his  father  would 
not  hear,  possibly  because  it  was  too  much 
like  his  own.  Still  the  young  pair  seem  to 
have  shown  attachment  for  each  other  at 
first,  but  in  time  the  emphatic  uncongeniality 
of  their  dispositions  began  to  show  itself. 
Three  children  were  born  to  the  couple  ever 
growing  more  unhappy  and  estranged.  The 
young  husband  never  gave  up  his  undomestic 
habits,  and  the  young  wife  was  totally  unable 


548       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

to  reclaim  him,  but  rather  showed  a  special 
ability  in  driving  him,  through  her  temper 
and  conduct,  to  take  refuge  in  his  inherited 
fatalities. 

Such  was  the  second  family  in  the  tragic 
line  of  Tantalus.  But  the  plan  of  Goethe  to 
reconstruct  his  House  on  an  aristocratic 
basis  and  to  thwart  the  consequences  of 
his  primordial  transgression  failed  totally. 
Where  lies  the  blame?  Again  the  woman  has 
received  no  little  censure,  and  left  behind  her 
a  long  line  of  mal-odorous  scandal,  not  with- 
out a  good  deal  of  provocation.  She  was  a 
person  of  decided  talent  in  her  way,  which, 
however,  turned  not  in  the  direction  of  wife- 
hood  and  home-making,  and  of  rightly  moth- 
ering her  own  children  and  thus  rescuing 
them  from  their  blood's  curse.  Instead  of 
averting  Fate  from  the  House  of  Tantalus, 
her  unhappy  bent  seemed  to  further  it,  so 
that  she  too  became  a  Tantalid  quite  as  much 
as  her  husband.  The  old  poet  had  often  to 
flee  from  this  second  household  with  its  awful 
domestic  dissonance,  in  spite  of  strong  at- 
tachment to  his  grandchildren.  Otherwise 
he  too  would  have  been  whelmed  into  that 
family  maelstrom  of  nemesis,  which  often 
prevented  him  from  using  his  weapon  of  sal- 
vation, his  pen,  with  which  he  could  stab  back 
all  his  stabbing  demons. 


.*• 
THE  NEW  HOUSE  OF  TANTALUS.  549 

Thus  the  two  women,  Christiane  and  Ot- 
tilia, placed  by  fortune  at  two  different  turn- 
ing-points in  the  destiny  of  their  families, 
show  themselves  not  only  unequal  to  their 
task,  but  they  aggravate  by  their  lives  the 
transmitted  malady.  Frail  mortals,  objects 
of  tragic  pity  rather  than  of  bitter  reproach 
they  appear  in  this  life-poem  of  Goethe  sink- 
ing under  the  burden  of  a  curse,  which  it  was 
their  supreme  call  to  mitigate  or  even  to  make 
undone,  but  they  could  not.  They  were  not 
Iphigenias,  lofty  mediatorial  characters  of 
women  able  to  lift  the  doom  of  evil  from  the 
House  of  Tantalus.  Rather  they  begot  it 
anew  and  sent  it  on  down  time  through  their 
progeny,  such  a  baleful  maternity  was  theirs, 
yet  sprung  of  their  deeds.  It  should  be  noted 
(to  avoid  confusion)  that  this  real  living 
Ottilia,  the  Tantalid  of  Goethe's  own  house- 
hold, is  a  very  different  character  from  his 
ideal  Ottilia,  the  saint  of  his  Elective  Affini- 
ties. 

Still  our  interest  somehow  will  turn  back 
to  the  son,  August  Goethe  and  query:  How 
can  he,  surely  fated  in  this  environment,  es- 
cape from  the  outstretching  clutch  of  Neme- 
sis which  he  has  given  more  than  one  evi- 
dence of  having  forefelt  and  even  foreseen! 
Has  he  the  inner  strength  to  reconstruct  his 
own  world  and  live  in  that,  having  freed  him- 


550       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

self  from  the  ever-pursuing  Furies  of  his  fa- 
ther's transgression?  Again  the  sympa- 
thetic spectator  of  his  lowering  lot  cannot 
help  crying  out  to  him  through  all  space  and 
time:  "Flee,  flee,  young  man,  leave  Ger- 
many, leave  Europe,  get  out  of  the  all-encom- 
passing soul-crushing  shadow  of  thy  great 
parent;  go  to  the  future,  to  America  whither 
the  tide  of  Europe-transcending  migration  is 
now  setting  in,  even  to  the  Mississippi. 
There  thou  canst  build  thy  life  over  in  free- 
dom and  make  it  thine,  unoppressed  by  the 
hugest  fame  in  thine  old  Fatherland.  Take 
thy  heart's  choice,  thy  folk-girl  along;  change 
thy  name  to  hers  if  need  be,  too  much  papa 
thou  hast  here  in  Weimar  and  always  wilt 
have;  get  rid  of  pedigree,  aristocracy,  kin- 
ship, with  its  damnation ;  cut  down  thy  genea- 
logical tree  to  the  last  root,  be  a  self-sufiV 
cient  man  on  the  free  prairies  of  Illinois 
whither  many  of  thy  countrymen  have  gone 
and  more  will  yet 'go;  there  thou  canst  dare 
the  Fates  of  thy  Tantalian  family  to  the  ut- 
termost." 

Will  he  hearken  to  the  urgent  whisper  of 
the  Upper  Powers !  For  he  must  have  heard 
it,  since  it  was  rife  in  Germany  at  the  time. 
Goethe  himself  has  noted  it  already  in  his 
Meister.  And  it  is  some  forty  years  since 
that  the  poet's  daring  sweetheart,  little  Lili, 

i? 


THE  NEW  HOUSE  OF  TANTALUS.  551 

challenged  him  to  flee  with  her  to  America 
away  from  domestic  and  social  obstacles  to 
their  union,  but  he  backed  down.  And  so  now 
August  Goethe  lets  his  father  practically 
select  his  uncongenial  but  aristocratic  bride, 
and  thus  determine  his  destiny  as  a  Tantalid. 
Hapless  son!  once  it  was  too  much  mother 
till  her  death  removed  the  ever-present  re- 
minder of  his  birth's  stigma;  now  it  is  too 
much  father  driving  him  to  the  renascence  of 
the  House  of  Tantalus,  and  the  second  more 
terrible  enactment  of  its  tragic  doom.  Alas ! 
he  too  was  no  Fate-compeller,  and  so  at  the 
most  important  node  of  his  life  he  gave  up 
his  man-renewing  will,  drooping  down  into  a 
wretched  second  Tantalus. 

Let  us  now  picture  the  hero  of  this  life- 
poem,  our  Goethe — for  he  is  a  hero  in  an  al- 
together new  line  of  heroism — standing  erect 
amid  his  unheroic  family,  Tantalus  overtow- 
ering  his  four  Tantalids,  whose  doom  he  had 
already  forefelt  and  even  foretold — what  can 
he  do?  Like  a  poor  fated  mortal  will  he 
cower  down  a  coward  before  the  nemesis  of 
his  own  deed,  and  slink  away  silently  into  his 
grave?  Not  at  all;  on  the  contrary  he  will 
love  again,  and  be  rejuvenated  and  recreated 
to  a  fresh  masterful  productivity,  the  new 
hero  of  his  own  new  Iliad.  So  behold  once 
more  the  grand  regenerating  metamorphosis 


552        GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

of  his  poetic  soul;  the  old  bowed-down  Fate- 
spent  Tantalus  leaps  up  at  the  push  of  his 
elemental  passion,  and  is  re-born  as  youthful 
Phileros,  the  lover  of  Love  singing  and  en- 
acting his  own  renewed  creation. 


ULRIKE  VON  LEVETZOW.  553 


CHAPTER  NINTH. 

ULRIKE  VON  LEVETZOW. 

' '  What !  another  crisis  of  love !  And  more 
desperate  than  ever !  and  the  poet  in  his  75th 
year!"  So  exclaims  the  appalled  reader  at 
the  upburst  of  this  new  turn  in  Goethe's  pas- 
sion-tossed career.  Indeed  it  would  almost 
seem  as  if  this  was  the  hardest  wrench  of  his 
life  in  downright  agony  of  heart.  Dare  we 
suppose  that  his  emotional  nature,  being 
somewhat  crystallized  by  old-age,  when  the 
inner  earthquake  heaved  it  up  to  the  sur- 
face, was  shivered  to  poetical  fragments  of 
which  he  succeeded  in  putting  together  a  few 
choice  gems  in  his  famous  Trilogy  of  Pas- 
sion? Certainly  no  occurrence  in  the  sur- 
prise-freighted story  of  his  days  has  caused 
so  much  gossipy  wonder,  varying  from  scorn 
to  sympathy.  It  has  undoubtedly  a  comic 
side,  almost  grotesque,  especially  to  those  not 
so  old  as  he  was.  Goethe  was  then  unmar- 
ried, a  free  ranger  in  love's  demesnes;  but 
look  at  his  silvered  hair,  his  corrugated  face, 
his  senile  stoop !  Then  consider  his  colossal 
fame  upreared  in  massive  deeds  of  Genius 
—what  a  unique  node  of  his  personality! 
For  Goethe  was,  in  this  act,  still  true  to  him- 


554        GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

self;  he  was  still  Phileros,  even  if  the  gray 
Phileros,  enacting  the  last  real  love-drama 
of  his  life  with  his  primordial  demonic  power. 
We  shall  see  that  he  connects  this  experience 
with  his  Werther,  as  if  interlinking  last  and 
first  in  one  great  cycle  of  his  heart's  deepest 
utterances. 

The  fair  maiden  who  was  the  cause  of  such 
a  mighty  overflow  of  his  soul's  inner  reser- 
voir of  passion,  was  Ulrike  Von  Levetzow, 
whom  the  poet  in  his  double  superlative  mood 
declared  "the  loveliest  of  the  loveliest 
shapes."  At  the  watering-place  Marienbad 
lay  the  scene;  the  hidden  emotion  had  been 
intensifying  for  several  summers  till  at  last 
in  1823  it  broke  forth  with  a  volcanic  energy, 
and  all  the  idle  tongues  in  such  a  resort  went 
to  wagging  upon  the  future  marriage.  The 
young  lady  was  still  prattling  in  her  teens; 
Goethe  was  hurrying  dangerously  upward  in 
the  seventies.  Faithful  Eckermann  has  left 
us  this  haunting  picture  evidently  drawn 
after  the  lover's  own  sketch:  whenever  he 
would  hear  her  girlish  voice  outside,  but  not 
far  from  his  window,  ' '  he  would  at  once  seize 
his  hat  and  hasten  to  her  presence ;  he  never 
missed  an  hour  which,  he  could  pass  at  her 
side,  and  thus  he  lived  happy  days,  till  the 
painful  parting  came  upon  which  he  made  a 
very  beautiful  poem. ' ' 


ULRIKE  VON  LEVETZOW.  555 

One  report  is  that  Goethe  himself  asked 
the  mother  for  the  daughter's  hand  in  mar- 
riage; others  say  that  this  ticklish  duty  was 
undertaken  for  him  by  the  ever-friendly 
Duke  of  Weimar  in  person  who  happened  to 
be  on  the  spot  at  the  right  moment.  The  out- 
come, however,  was  that  the  mother  in  the 
very  nick  of  the  crisis,  bundled  up  her 
daughter,  and  secretly  took  to  flight  from  the 
watering-place  which  was  all  agog  at  the 
spectacle.  And  that  mother,  now  a  widow 
with  three  daughters,  had  been  known  to 
Goethe  in  her  younger  days  and  had  been  se- 
lected by  him  as  the  best  representative  of 
his  Pandora.  This  was  back  in  1806.  Pos- 
terity will  always  wonder  why  he  did  not  take 
to  the  mother  who  was  still  young  enough  to 
be  easily  his  child,  and  was  a  favorite  of  his 
during  many  years.  Too  old,  thinks  the  ever- 
youthful  poet,  and  passes  her  by  so  that  it 
seems  possible  that  her  resentment  may  have 
had  a  part  in  the  drama.  But  Phileros  has 
dropped  back  some  fifty  years  to  Werther's 
time  and  is  completely  rejuvenescent  through 
love ;  indeed  Phileros  properly  knows  no  age. 
So  he  must  have  youth  as  his  right  counter- 
part, whatever  the  grumbling  years  may 
say. 

At  any  rate  Goethe  had  again  to  be  re- 
signed at  the  defeat  of  his  dearest  hope.  The 


556        GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

result  was  another  journey  through  the  dark 
valley  of  renunciation,  in  which  he  was  al- 
most torn  to  pieces  by  his  eagle-clawed  re- 
surgences of  emotion.  But  he  emerges  once 
more  with  a  fresh  vitality;  indeed  after  pass- 
ing through  the  crushing  discipline  of  love 
he  appears  to  be  endowed  with  a  young 
creative  energy.  We  have  repeatedly  no- 
ticed the  fact :  at  certain  intervals  of  life  he 
is  dipped  by  the  Powers'  into  the  original 
fountain  of  regenerating  love,  whereby  he 
comes  forth  new-born  with  a  fresh  lease  of 
elemental  creativity,  out  of  which  spring  new 
forms  of  his  genius.  So  it  happens  that  after 
this  fiery  ordeal  which  seems  to  reach  down 
to  primal  creation,  and  to  recreate  his  age- 
ing energy,  he  starts  with  youthful  vigor  to 
complete  the  greatest  and  most  elaborate 
works  of  his  life,  among  which  are  his  Faust, 
his  Meister,  and  his  Autobiography,  not  to 
speak  of  many  minor  activities.  It  is,  how- 
ever, the  last  Epoch  of  his  long  career,  he  is 
now  on  the  home-stretch  of  his  final  Period, 
which  will  yet  continue  nearly  another  decen- 
nium. 

If  we  carefully  compare  and  weigh  the 
three  or  four  years  before  the  Epoch  of  Ul- 
rike,  we  shall  find  that  the  poet  appears  on 
the  wane,  he  seems  to  be  settling  into  the 
natural  quiescence  of  age,  as  if  he  were  get- 


ULRIKE  VON  LEVETZOW.  557 

ting  ready  for  the  close.  He  is  putting  his 
literary  house  in  order,  that  he  may  perma- 
nently depart.  He  began  (1819)  his  Annals, 
some  brief  jottings  of  his  past  days;  he  hur- 
riedly patched  together  his  novel  The  Jour- 
neymanship ,  and  published  it,  though  incom- 
plete; with  the  new  lease  of  years  which  he 
did  not  then  foresee,  he  will  take  it  up  again, 
renovate  it  and  finish  it.  Poetically  he  flung 
off  an  occasional  lyric,  not  his  best  by  any 
means,  and  spat  out  many  a  pungent  little 
epigram,  often  very  keen  and  suggestive, 
which  we  may  track  down  through  many 
moods  and  times  under  the  title  of  his  Tame 
Xenia.  He  still  flees  to  Natural  Science,  his 
Achillean  tent  in  which  he  sulks  over  his 
lack  of  appreciation,  and  damns  with  unction 
the  regulars  of  the  scientific  guild,  the.  Pro- 
fessors. 

Also  during  these  ominous  years  the  do- 
mestic tragedy  threading  through  his  life 
grows  deeper  and  more  lowering;  the  mar- 
riage of  his  son  which  he  hoped  might  avert 
Fate,  threatens  to  hasten  it  and  to  make  it 
more  terrible.  Husband  and  wife  have  found 
themselves  totally  unfitted  for  each  other, 
and  uncongeniality  reaches  down  to  the  In- 
ferno of  a  mutual  curse.  August  Goethe 
helps  himself  out  through  drink  and  strange 
women  and  the  wife  takes  her  way  of  getting 


558       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

even.  The  unhappy  father  has  often  to  run 
from  his  own  house  in  order  to  find  some 
peace  and  to  gain  a  little  composure  to  do 
his  work  in  the  world — which  was  his  way  of 
saying  his  prayers.  No  wonder  he  felt  the 
end  of  himself  drawing  near  in  his  family's 
cataclysm.  It  was  in  1819  that  he  published 
his  Divan,  and  snuffed  out  in  printer's  ink 
the  last  flickerings  of  his  last  love  for  Mari- 
anne Willemer.  Now  what  is  he  going  to  do  ? 
For  Goethe's  genius  stumbled  and  writhed 
in  outer  darkness  without  the  love  of  woman. 
He  once  exclaimed  in  humorous  despair: 
"Nobody  in  love  with  me,  I  with  nobody  in 
love:"  which  may  sound  comic  to  you  and 
me,  but  to  Phileros  it  meant  the  extinction  of 
his  creative  soul,  if  not  of  life  itself. 

But  now  upon  the  aged  poet  thus  descend- 
ing life's  declivity  into  the  gloom  of  Erebus, 
suddenly  darts  the  shining  shape  of  UJrike, 
"the  loveliest  of  loveliest  shapes."  The 
dawn  of  another  youthful  passion  drives 
away  the  clouds,  at  once  senescence  begins  to 
transmute  itself  into  juvenescence,  and  a  re- 
newed genetic  energy  starts  to  recall  his 
eclipsed  if  not  dying  spirit  from  its  depths. 
Love,  the  creative  might  of  the  Cosmos,  has 
tapped  afresh  the  sources  of  his  Genius  and 
set  them  to  flowing  once  more  in  sun-lit  ebul- 
lience of  poetry.  For  his  love  possesses  the 


.*• 

ULRIKE  VON  LEVETZOW.  559 

original  power  of  recreating  the  old  man 
both  mentally  and  physically,  so  that  he  sets 
forth  again  to  grapple  with  his  colossal  task 
of  working  out  fully  his  total  life-poem,  since 
it  is  not  yet  complete.  But  the  transition 
cannot  be  made  without  shaking  up  the  old 
framework  and  re-incarnating  it  with  fresh 
life  responsive  to  the  new  birth  of  his  Genius. 
He  almost  went  to  pieces  in  the  process  of 
renewal.  One  is  reminded  of  the  fabled 
daughters  of  Pelias  who  cut  up  their  aged 
father's  body,  and  throwing  the  slices  into 
a  cauldron  of  hot  water,  sought  to  boil  the 
years  out  of  his  tottering  flesh  and  thus  re- 
store him  to  youth.  Maiden  Ulrike,  uncon- 
scious of  her  dower,  put  the  old  poet  through 
some  such  seething  process,  painful  within 
an  inch  of  death,  but  the  result  followed  that 
he  survived  and  was  made  over  into  a  new 
Epoch  of  his  Genius,  even  if  the  last. 

Thus  it  comes  that  our  Phileros,  the  lover 
of  Love,  has  again  to  renounce  that  which 
constitutes  the  very  essence  of  his  individu- 
ality and  to  recover  himself  for  his  grand  pos- 
itive achievement  which  is  to  wind  up  to  a 
full  finish  his  long  and  varied  career.  We 
may  recollect  that  this  Period — the  third — 
opened  with  the  preluding  passion  of  the  poet 
for  Minna  Herzlieb,  who  also  stirred  his 
production  to  a  many-sided  utterance,  and 


560        GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

whom  he  likewise  had  to  renounce  after  suf- 
fering for  years  from  a  bleeding  heart 
' 'which  is  afraid  to  get  well."  He  at  that 
time  hovered  about  the  age  of  sixty  years, 
and  was  bonded  legally  to  a  wife,  who,  how- 
ever, in  her  physical  and  mental  decadence, 
possessed  not  the  least  power  of  rousing  his 
Genius  from  its  torpid  emotional  sources  to 
creative  activity.  Goethe  was  husband  to 
Christiane,  Phileros  was  not,  and  never 
could  be.  That  was  the  fatal  dualism  rend- 
ing his  life  atwain,  and  making  him  a  living 
Tantalus,  and  dooming  even  his  children's 
children  to  be  Tantalids  shent  with  tragic 
destiny. 

Another  reflection  concerning  our  Phileros 
rises  in  the  present  connection:  this  is  the 
last  of  his  elemental  or  cosmic  loves  which 
had  the  power  of  penetrating  to  the  very 
center  of  his  being,  perchance  of  all  being, 
and  from  thence  making  him  over,  renewing 
if  not  re-creating  his  original  personality. 
He  is  still  Goethe,  yet  different  from  any  pre- 
vious form  of  his  selfhood.  Undoubtedly  he 
now  harks  back  to  his  past,  recalling  himself 
and  even  repeating  himself;  still  the  repeti- 
tion undergoes  a  unique  change  of  signifi- 
cance when  shifted  from  life 's  prelude  to  the 
finale.  According  to  our  view  he  renounces 
many  other  things  in  this  last  Epoch  besides 


ULRIKE  VON  LEVETZOW.  561 

the  love  of  Ulrike.  His  literary  form  is  not 
the  same,  his  poetical  creed  undergoes  a 
transmutation,  his  world-view  takes  a  new 
tinge,  if  not  a  new  article  of  faith*,  his  atti- 
tude toward  man  and  the  universe  shows  a 
fresh  evolution.  The  renunciation  of  that 
last  love  overwrought  his  whole  existence. 
Still  he  is  Goethe,  but  Goethe  reviewing  Goe- 
the, making  his  life  whole,  and  universaliz- 
ing all  his  multitudinous  work  into  a  total 
life-poem  ere  he  quits  the  terrestrial  scene. 

Renunciation  as  immediate,  taken  simply 
hy  itself  is  a  negative  act  which  is  to  get  out 
of  itself  and  rise  to  a  positive  doing.  * '  Sep- 
aration is  death, "  cries  the  poet  in  his  first 
agony;  still  he  separates  from  Ulrike  and 
lives;  he  renounces  her  and  then  renounces 
his  renunciation,  and  mounts  higher.  That 
love  for  just  the  one  here  and  now  he  has  to 
give  up,  but  he  transfigures  it  into  an  univer- 
sal love,  which  is  a  consecrated  service  to 
man.  Such  a  deep  undertone  we  can  hear 
throbbing  through  his  later  labors,  even  if 
there  be  relapses.  This  we  may  well  deem 
the  final  discipline  of  Phileros,  after  a  very 
chequered  career,  which  we  have  followed 
from  its  first  sensuous  outburst  to  its  uni- 
versal human  service. 

It  remains  to  take  a  few  brief  glimpses  of 
the  leading  works  which  are  strown  along 


562       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM—PART  THIRD. 

this  final  turn  of  the  poet's  life-cycle.  Some 
ten  years  we  may  reckon  its  duration,  from 
the  first  tick  on  the  horologe  of  love  at  Mari- 
enbad  to  the  expiring  breath  of  the  aged  lover 
in  his  Weimar  home.  An  Epoch  of  rejuve- 
nant  activity  and  unique  productive  great- 
ness it  is  for  us,  though  often  decried  as  a 
time  of  mental  decay  and  poetic  senility,  es- 
pecially by  younger  biographers  and  critics. 
But  we  shall  treat  it  as  a  right  integral  part 
of  the  one  great  poem  which,  we  hold,  Goe- 
the not  only  wrote  but  lived. 


I. 

The  Trilogy  of  Passion. 

The  immediate  utterance  of  the  poet's 
heart-break  in  the  affair  of  Ulrike  bears  the 
foregoing  title.  The  poem  designs  to  give 
the  primal  round  of  his  intense  experience  in 
all  its  concentration  of  passion.  A  very  fa- 
mous piece  of  work  it  is ;  it  flows  molten  from 
the  heart  at  white  heat,  as  if  forged  in  the 
central  fires  of  existence.  It  is  worthy  of 
earnest  notice  not  only  for  its  intrinsic  merit, 
but  also  as  being  germinal  of  the  present  Ep- 
och, the  brief  yet  volcanic  overture  of  the 
coming  poetical  Decennium. 

From  what  has  been  said,  the  poem  will 


THE  TRILOGY  OF  PASSION.  563 

not  let  itself  be  read  easily ;  its  purport  can- 
not be  picked  up  from  the  surface  and  lightly 
filliped  off  by  the  average  newspaper  glance. 
You  have  to  fling  yourself  into  its  fiery  fur- 
nace and  glow  with  its  passion — a  thing  not 
to  be  done  off-hand  at  any  minute.  The  poem 
is  not  a  long  one,  yet  quite  long  enough  for 
such  a  trying  ordeal;  otherwise  the  reader 
would  not  hold  out.  But  so  much  he  must 
stand  if  he  would  understand  Goethe.  As 
the  name  indicates,  the  poem  has  three  parts, 
each  of  which  may  be  touched  upon  briefly. 

I.  The  superscription  of  the  first  part  is 
addressed  To  Werther.  Thus  the  old  poet 
connects  himself  with  his  first  love-hero, 
reaching  back  some  fifty  years  or  more.  He 
conjures  up  the  ghost  of  tragic  Werther  and 
makes  it  walk  the  earth  again  in  company 
with  himself  who  has  just  had  another  such 
experience.  Moreover  it  should  be  noted 
that  the  same  recurrence  of  Werther 's  spirit 
has  taken  place  several  times  within  the  in- 
tervening half  century.  But  Phileros  here 
interlinks  his  earliest  and  his  latest  epochal 
loves,  and  in  a  pensive  vein  forebodes  this  to 
be  the  final  round-up  of  his  love-life. 

Tell  what  is  the  central  fact  of  this  long 
discipline  as  soon  as  possible.  Here  it  is: 
"The  fascination  of  woman's  form  seizes  us 
with  violence, "  and  this  violence  like  the 


564       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

earthquake  is  elemental,  original  in  Nature 
herself,  and  may  destroy  the  man  as  in  Wer- 
ther's  case.  But  not  in  Goethe's  case,  for  he 
has  the  mediatorial  gift  of  expressing  his 
pain  and  thus  getting  rid  of  it  ere  Fate 
whelms  him  under.  Such  is  his  God-given 
mastery  of  utterance  which  rescues  him  from 
the  tragic  backstroke  of  his  own  overpower- 
ing love.  Just  that  was  what  saved  him  from 
Werther's  lot  long  ago  and  is  to  save  him 
now. 

The  poet  gives  a  brief  review  of  his  stormy 
and  stressful  youth,  and  his  escape  from  the 
crushing  blow  of  love 's  last  farewell,  whereat 
the  phantom  indulges  in  a  ghostly  smile, 
seemingly  the  smile  of  a  superior  des- 
tiny.' Then  we  hear  the  agonizing  out- 
cry: "Separation  is  death !"  No,  it  is 
not  death  for  Goethe  and  never  has  been 
in  youth,  middle  life,  or.  old  age :  listen  to  his 
strain  which  sings  the  deepest  discord  of  his 
nature  out  of  his  days,  which  can  again  be- 
come free  and  creative  and  thus  mediatorial 
for  those  smitten  by  a  like  blow  of  destiny. 
At  last  we  may  hear  the  preluding  note  of 
triumph  in  the  distich: 

How  touching  is  it  when  the  poet  sings, 

That  he  may  shun  the  death  which  parting 
brings. 

II.  The   second  part  is    entitled     simply 


THE  TRILOGY  OF  PASSION.  565 

Elegy,  but  it  is  very  different  in  mood  and 
poetic  form  from  the  sensuous  exuberance  of 
the  Roman  Elegies  already  considered.  We 
hear  now  the  rhymed  music  of  a  deep  inter- 
nality,  and  see  no  longer  the  outer  plastic  im- 
age moving  to  classical  measures.  The  clear 
Greek  world  has  sunk  into  modern  subjectiv- 
ity, which  paints  itself  in  all  the  colors  of  the 
rainbow,  yet  with  a  glowing  intensity  which 
burns.  Let  the  prefixed  motto  be  first  pon- 
dered, in  which  Goethe  cites  himself,  express- 
ing a  thought  which  he  evidently  deemed  the 
key  of  his  whole  literary  career :  his  poetical 
gift  of  utterance  is  God-sent,  and  is  his  re- 
demption from  his  deepest  sorrows,  even 
from  what  might  be  otherwise  for  him  the 
tragedy  of  life. 

This  Elegy  is  the  longest  part  of  the  Tril- 
ogy (23  stanzas  of  six  lines  each)  and  gives 
in  general  the  sweetest  yet  fiercest  discipline 
of  love  which  he,  now  looking  backward  in 
reminiscence,  has  passed  through  with  Ul- 
rike.  Here  appears  the  double  wrench  which 
makes  him  cry  out  at  the  start  in  the  first 
verse :  "Paradise,  Hell  gape  open  for  thee," 
that  is,  for  himself.  But  soon  love  trans- 
lated him  to  its  Heaven:  "No  wish,  no  hope, 
no  longing  remained  unfulfilled, "  he  had 
reached  the  stage  of  absolute  triumph  over 
finite  existence  in  communion  with  this  in- 


566       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

carnation  of  ' l  eternal  beauty. ' '  Then  his  ec- 
stacy  throbs  into  particular  memories,  espe- 
cially recalling  the  kisses,  of  which  "the  last 
one,  brutally  sweet "  snipped  atwain  "the 
glorious  network  of  intertwined  loves. ' '  Now 
what!  Our  poor  Adam  looks  back  helpless 
"as  if  driven  from  his  Paradise  by  a  Cherub 
flaming,"  and  the  gates  are  locked,  while  his 
heart  smites  enthralled  to  the  following  list 
of  demonic  companions:  "Melancholy,  re- 
morse, self-reproach  and  crushing  anxiety*; " 
so  he  names  the  infernal  pack  of  hell-hounds 
that  are  snapping  at  his  soul.  Such  is  the 
sharp  counterstroke  which  the  old  man  feels 
for  his  indulgence  in  a  young  love,  which 
surely  will  not  be  without  its  penalty.  Thus 
the  poet  gives  a  peep  into  his  inner  reaction 
after  the  raptures  of  his  intoxication.  Still 
he  recovers  at  the  memory  of  "that  last 
kiss;"  nay,  it  seems  that  there  was  still  an- 
other kiss  after  the  very  last  one,  "which  she 
pressed  upon  my  lips."  In  general,  what  an 
everlasting  kisser  was  Goethe,  certainly  all 
through  his  poetry,  and  doubtless  in  reality ! 
Happy  man !  he  was  not  troubled  by  the  mod- 
ern compunction  about  the  kiss  that  it  is  un- 
hygienic. Thus  Phileros  portrays  his  dip  in- 
to the  fountain  of  love  to  the  very  bottom, 
and  his  resignation  to  its  honeyed  parox- 
ysms. 


THE  TRILOGY  OF  PASSION.  567 

But  now  for  the  other  side — he  rises  out 
of  this  baptismal  ordeal  to  a  renovation  of 
his  will,  to  the  quick  deed,  to  new  reso- 
lutions and  fresh  enterprises  "when  love 
spiritualizes  the  lover. "  Moreover,  "hope 
dawns  again  "  and  he  is  ready  to  face  life  with 
a  renewed  youthful  energy.  So  Goethe  was 
conscious  of  this  reproductive  power  of  an 
elemental  love  over  his  spirit.  He  could  not 
control  its  coming,  it  was  upon  him  ere  he 
fully  knew  it ;  something  transcendent  it  was 
which  he  had  to  accept  and  to  pass  through 
as  a  supernal  visitation.  Blame  him  if  you 
will,  we  have  seen  that  he  blamed  himself, 
for  what  else  mean  those  throes  of  "remorse 
and  self  -reproach  1"  Still  he  refused  to  sink 
back  resignedly  into  a  deedless  self-tritura- 
tion  even  of  conscience,  which  is  simply  de- 
structive, but  rose  to  a  higher  constructive 
energy  till  the  very  going-down  of  his  octo- 
genarian sun.  Therein  verily  lies  his  evangel 
and  his  prophecy  unto  the  future. 

To  a  still  loftier  height  does  the  poet  bear 
upward  his  experience  of  this  love :  it  brought 
him  the  peace  of  God,  which  he  felt  "in  the 
presence  of  the  all-loved  being,"  the  sense 
of  union  with  her,  "of  belonging  to  her," 
lay  deepest  in  his  heart  and  joined  him  with 
divinity;  "in  a  higher,  purer,  unknown,  un- 
named One,  I  am  a  participant  when  I  stand 


568       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM— PART  THIRD. 

before  her."  So  the  loved  Ulrike  becomes  a 
mediator  of  the  old  poet  with  his  God,  and  he 
actually  turns  pious — he  uses  the  very  word 
— while  "all  Egoism  melts  away;"  and  our 
Mephistopheles  renounces  "selfishness  and 
willfulness"  in  the  glance  of  this  regenerat- 
ing love.  Such  is  the  topmost  height  of  the 
poem  which  preludes  the  key-note  of  his  last 
Epoch  now  forthcoming.  Still  he  has  an- 
other relapse  when  he  thinks  of  the  separa- 
tion ;  he  wilts  down  again  to  a  swooning  away 
of  resolution  and  will  until  "life  and  death 
grapple  each  other  in  furious  combat ; "  he  is 
scourged  hither  and  thither  by  "an  irresist- 
ible longing,  there  remains  no  counsel  for 
him  but  infinite  tears."  In  this  state  he  cries 
out:  "To  me  the  All  is  lost — I  am  lost  to 
myself — I  who  was  once  the  darling  of  the 
Gods,"  who,  however,  have  driven  him 
through  this  hard  trial  to  the  highest  exer- 
cise of  Genius,  to  his  self-utterance  in  po- 
etry. 

III.  To  this  central  poem  there  is  an  ap- 
pendage which  is  called  Reconciliation,  and 
which  celebrates  the  soothing  power  of  mu- 
sic over  the  passion-torn  heart,  even  hinting 
the  divinely  mediatorial  value  of  harmonious 
tones  as  well  as  of  tears.  This  is  the  poet's 
homage  to  the  piano-playing  of  Madam  Szy- 
manowska,  a  Polish  lady  whose  musical  skill 


THE  TRILOGY  OF  PASSION.  569 

made  a  deep  impression  upon  Goethe  at  Ma- 
rienbad,  sensitive  as  he  then  was  to  the  mar- 
riage of  sweet  sounds.  But  it  would  seem 
that  his  tender  feelings  afterward  overflowed 
not  only  to  the  music  but  to  the  musician ;  so 
he  is  understood  to  intimate  in  the  last  verse 
in  which  "the  lightened  heart  thankfully  of- 
fers itself  in  return  for  an  oblation  so  rich." 
Why  not?  The  awful  chasm  caused  by  sepa- 
ration must  be  filled  or  at  least  bridged  by 
another  attachment,  "and  thus  is  felt  the 
double  bliss  of  love  and  music." 

The  reconciling  Polish  pianist  with  her 
sister  followed  Goethe  to  Weimar,  doubt- 
less through  an  invitation,  but  very  willingly. 
It  happens  that  reporter  Miiller  has  left  a 
record  of  that  time,  and  fails  not  to  let  us 
see  that  Goethe  manifested  "the  double  bliss 
of  music  and  love"  in  her  presence  repeat- 
edly. But  it  was  not  an  elemental  soul- 
searching  love  like  that  for  Ulrike,  rather 
was  it  a  reminder  or  a  re-echoing  of  that,  a 
temporary  relieving  substitute.  When  the 
last  parting  from  the  Polish  ladies  took  place, 
Goethe  tried  to  be  merry  and  humorous.  But, 
says  our  reporter,  all  his  forced  fun  was  in 
vain,  "the  tears  streamed  forth,  speechless 
he  embraced  her  with  the  sister,  and  his  look 
followed  her  a  long  time  till  she  disap- 
peared." That  night  he  was  prostrated  by 


570        GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

a  severe  life-storming  illness,  from  which  he 
slowly  recovered.  The  question  will  come 
up,  how  about  the  pianist  on  her  side,  for 
she  too  must  have  had  a  heart  as  well  as  lips. 
Old  Zelter  herein  furnishes  a  clew  from  Ber- 
lin where  Madam  Szymanowska  had  given 
two  concerts  with  success,  and  had  paid  him 
a  visit.  So  he  writes  to  Goethe:  "She  is 
madly  in  love  with  you,  and  has  sent  to  you 
a  hundred  kisses  upon  my  mouth."  (Not 
cited  by  any  other  biographer  of  Goethe 
within  our  reach  except  the  lynx-eyed  Jesuit 
Pater,  Baumgartner,  who,  though  a  vowed 
celibate,  very  dutifully  and  zestfully  records 
in  detail  Goethe's  love-scenes.) 


II. 

Wilhelm  Meister's  Journey  mansliip. 

The  title  of  this  book  in  the  original  is 
Wanderjahre,  usually  translated  into  Eng- 
lish by  the  word  Travels,  which  is  vague  and 
not  strictly  pertinent,  even  if  it  has  the  high 
sanction  of  Thomas  Carlyle.  The  work  is 
the  counterpart  both  in  name  and  thought  to 
the  Lehrjahre  or  Apprenticeship,  with  which 
it  is  co-ordinate  in  a  greater  whole,  and  the 
designation  should  not  fail  to  indicate  such 


WILHELM  M BISTER'S  JOURNEYMANSHIP.       571 

a  purport.  Hence  we  altogether  prefer  the 
corresponding  English  term  Journeyman- 
ship,  which  suggests  life's  workman  who 
wishes  to  become  master  in  the  supreme  art 
of  living,  and  who  must  pass  through  the 
present  stage  in  due  order.  And  the  name 
of  the  leading  character  which  designates 
also  the  book  is  Wilhelm  Meister,  in  English 
William  Master,  who  is  supposed  to  be  in 
pursuit  of  his  highest  self  as  worthily  real- 
ized, that  is,  in  pursuit  of  mastery  both  in 
his  inner  world  and  in  his  outer  vocation. 
Thus  he,  just  through  his  calling,  however 
humble  it  may  be,  is  to  rise  to  the  all-rounded 
man,  whose  completeness  is  to  be  reflected  in 
those  three  stages  of  his  artisanship — the 
apprentice,  the  journeyman,  and  the  master. 
And  it  should  be  added  that  these  three 
stages  are  interwrought  into  one  great  to- 
tality of  human  development,  which  is  ulti- 
mately the  creation  of  the  soul's  very  proc- 
ess, and  hence  is  to  be  grasped  finally  as  psy- 
chical. 

It  is  true  that  Goethe  does  not  carry  the 
matter  as  far  back  as  that.  He  is  the  poet 
who  works  instinctively,  and  presents  what  is 
immediate;  still  he  is  also  profoundly  re- 
flective in  this  book,  and  throws  many  a 
glance  into  the  last  depths.  It  is,  however, 
to  be  noted  that  Goethe  never  wrote  the  third 


572        GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

part  of  the  grand  evolution,  namely  the  Mas- 
tership of  William  Master,  in  which  the  un- 
heroic  hero  realizes  himself  fully  in  his  voca- 
tion and  in  his  world,  rounding  out  to  com- 
pleteness his  life's  whole  experience,  and 
making  himself  an  image  of  the  All.  Yet  our 
author  knows  of  this  final  part  and  in  two  or 
three  passages  he  seems  to  give  some  prom- 
ise that  he  intends  such  a  continuation.  But 
•he  was  80  years  old  when  he  brought  to  an 
end  this  second  arc  of  Meister  's  cycle,  and  he 
must  have  forefelt  that  his  own  last  arc 
would  soon  close.  Besides,  he  had  still  an- 
other even  more  imperative  task  to  perform 
in  the  completion  of  his  Faust. 

Nevertheless  we  cannot  forbear  the  reflec- 
tion that  Goethe  did  actually  finish  the  Mas- 
tership of  the  Master  (so  he  was  and  still  is 
often  called)  in  the  total  round  of  his  career. 
His  biography  should  not  fail  to  give  the 
third  part  of  the  Master  which  he  lived  out 
if  he  did  not  fully  write  out.  We  are  now 
engaged  in  contemplating  the  final  Period  of 
the  poet,  which  is  the  revelation  of  his  com- 
pleted Mastership  in  which  he  attains  the 
serenity  and  wisdom  of  age,  after  the  volcanic 
upheavals  of  his  youthful  Apprenticeship, 
and  the  lofty,  wonder-working  productivity 
of  his  mid-life 's  Journeymanship.  In  the  two 
parts  of  this  Novel  we  may  catch  the  outlines 


WILHELM  MEISTER'S  JOURNEYMANSHIP.       573 

of  an  universal  Biography,  even  if  the  final 
inter-connecting  link  be  wanting.  Possibly 
Goethe  intended  to  let  the  reader  find  it  pre- 
figured in  several  characters  of  the  present 
J ourneymansliip ,  such  as  Makaria  the  celes- 
tial seeress,  and  the  nameless  mysterious 
wise-man  (Book  I,  Chap.  12).  Also  many 
fragmentary  incidents  appear  to  gleam  for- 
ward to  some  fulfilment ;  productive  industry 
and  emigration  flash  upon  us  rather  as  proph- 
ecies of  a  new  order  yet  to  be  realized,  while 
the  repeated  outlooks  upon  the  New  World, 
our  America,  which  are  so  characteristic  of 
this  novel,  seem  to  foreshadow  another  stage 
of  History,  and  another  institutional  order 
transcending  the  European.  All  of  which 
glances  the  poet  throws  upon  Meister's  po- 
tential Third  Part. 

The  dominant  note  of  the  J ourneymansliip 
is  education,  and  the  remedial  power  which 
it  shows  for  saving  both  the  individual  and 
society.  The  Novel  opens  with  Wilhelm  giv- 
ing some  very  elementary  instruction  on  Na- 
ture to  his  boy  Felix;  then  both  the  father 
and  son  are  put  under  training  through  a 
long  line  of  formative  experiences,  which 
constitute  the  content  of  the  work.  Then  in 
the  last  chapter,  Wilhelm  having  acquired  a 
special  vocation,  that  of  surgery,  saves  the 
life  of  his  boy — an  act  of  significant  symbol- 


574       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

ism  doubtless  intended  by  the  poet.  Thus 
the  sweep  of  the  book  hovers  between  educa- 
tion and  salvation  as  prelude  and  epilogue. 
And  the  first  lesson  of  the  first  page  is  an 
object-lesson  on  a  stone  picked  up  by  the  boy, 
as  if  the  parental  teacher  had  just  come  from 
the  school  of  Pestalozzi. 

During  the  composition  of  this  Novel,  and 
indeed  during  Goethe's  entire  life,  education 
was  in  the  air,  and  had  become  in  Germany 
an  object  of  national  striving.  He  had  been 
in  his  young  manhood  thrown  with  that 
strange  pedagogical  reformer  Basedow,  of 
whom  he  gives  a  humorous  description,  but 
whose  educational  ideas  struck  root  in  his 
career.  It  was,  however,  the  Swiss  educator, 
Johann  Heinrich  Pestalozzi,  who  developed 
the  movement  for  popular  education  which 
makes  his  name  the  greatest  in  this  field. 
Goethe  had  met  him  and  had  been  addressed 
by  him  in  an  urgent  appeal  for  sympathy  in 
his  work.  Nor  must  we  forget  the  second 
greatest  influence  in  modern  education,  Fried- 
rich  Froebel,  with  his  gospel  of  the  little 
child.  Froebel  came  from  near-by  Thurin- 
gia,  and  attended  the  University  of  Jena 
where  he  must  have  often  seen  its  chief  pro- 
moter, the  poet  from  Weimar.  But  the  in- 
terest began  to  break  over  national  bounds. 
Pestalozzi 's  school  especially,  the  one  at 


WILHELM  MEISTER' S  JOURNEYMANSHIP.      575 

Yverdon,  became  a  center  where  inspecting 
visitors  could  be  seen  not  only  from  every 
part  of  Europe,  but  America  also  furnished 
its  contingent.  Thus  the  education  of  the 
people  had  become  an  universal  aspiration, 
manifesting  itself  in  the  best  souls  of  the 
time.  Hence  we  may  see  that  the  universal 
poet  of  the  period  tapped  the  deepest  ten- 
dency not  only  of  his  own  people  but  of  all 
forward  nations  in  the  Novel  of  Wilhelm 
Meister,  which  is  essentially  educational  in 
both  parts. 

Still  Goethe,  in  order  to  perform  his  far- 
thest-reaching world-literary  achievement 
had  also  to  have  an  immediate,  personal  push 
from  his  own  environment.  Everything 
which  he  wrote  took  its  rise  in  his  direct  ex- 
perience. He  had  to  be  living  what  he  was 
writing.  Accordingly,  the  fact  which  most 
intimately  connects  the  author  with  his 
book  is  that  he  had,  during  these  earlier  years 
of  composing  Meister,  a  young  son  to  edu- 
cate. Hence  the  anxious  father  was  inces- 
santly pondering  the  problem:  "What  am 
I  to  do  with  this  boy  of  mine!  How  can  I 
train  him  to  perform  best  his  part  in  the 
world,  and  to  fill  his  place  in  the  social  or- 
der?" The  problem  starts  up  decisively 
when  Meister  finds,  in  the  Apprenticeship 
that  Felix  is  his  child,  and  it  streams  all  the 


576       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

way  through  the  J ourneymanship  from  the 
first  point  to  the  finishing. 

To  be  sure  the  parent  is  to  get  his  disci- 
pline likewise  in  the  training  of  his  son.  He 
learns  as  much  from  his  boy  as  the  latter  from 
him.  Meister  himself  is  not  yet  educated,  he 
is  still  to  acquire  life's  highest  discipline. 
Hence  there  is  a  double  educational  thread 
spun  through  the  Journeymanship,  quite  as 
we  see  in  the  Odyssey  that  father  Ulysses 
and  son  Telemachus  are  each  getting  his 
training  in  accord  with  his  environment  and 
the  needs  of  his  years.  The  wandering  pa- 
rent Wilhelm,  wandering  so  long  not  only 
physically,  but  mentally,  is  brought  to  con- 
centrate upon  a  vocation ;  while  the  boy  Felix 
must  be  inducted  into  his  spiritual  heritage 
transmitted  to  him  by  time  through  educa- 
tion. A  double  rescue,  therefore,  we  may 
note  at  the  conclusion  of  the  novel. 

We  must  not  fail  to  put  stress  upon  the 
most  striking  link  of  personal  connection 
with  Goethe.  Felix  is  the  natural  son  of 
Meister,  whom  the  latter  discovers  by  a  curi- 
ous chance  when  the  boy  is  already  a  roister- 
ing youngster  in  need  of  his  first  lessons.  In- 
evitably comes  up  to  the  reader  Goethe's  son 
August,  also  born  out  of  wedlock,  and  now 
sorely  requiring  a  right  instruction.  The  lad 
some  seven  or  eight  years  old  must  have 


WILHELM  MEISTER'S  JOURNEYMANSHIP.       577 

often  intruded  upon  his  father's  study  while 
the  latter  was  writing  the  last  books  of  the 
Apprenticeship,  which  already  in  1796  he 
feels  must  have  a  second  part  for  the  sake  of 
the  boy  as  well  as  of  himself.  He  makes  va- 
rious later  attempts  to  complete  it;  in  1807 
and  in  1810  he  works  at  it,  but  it  refuses  to 
get  itself  done.  For  the  growth  cannot  be 
forced,  it  has  at  last  to  write  itself  from  his 
own  experience  which  is  not  yet  ripe.  He 
has  to  wait  particularly  for  the  son  to  evolve 
through  training  into  character  that  he  may 
see  the  fruit. 

But  we  are  to  scan  carefully  the  grand  ob- 
stacle. There  is  an  established  educational 
order  but  the  boy  cannot  share  in  that.  If  he 
were  sent  to  the  Public  School  with  other 
lads,  what  would  he  not  hear  about  his  birth 
and  his  mother  in  every  little  squabble? 
August  Goethe  had  to  have  his  private 
teacher  at  home,  cut  off  from  the  associates 
of  his  time  of  life.  But  for  Felix  the  poet 
creates  a  peculiar  pedagogical  institute  where 
his  origin  is  not  known,  to  which  his  father 
brings  him.  He  must  be  trained  to  live  in  an 
institutional  order  outside  of  which  he  was 
born.  Such  is  the  living  contradiction  which 
the  parent  has  brought  into  existence  in  his 
most  loved  human  being  and  which  he  tries 
to  solve  through  education.  The  result  is 


578       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

that  we  can  feel  all  the  throbs  of  Goethe's 
heart,  all  the  anxieties  for  his  irregular  son, 
all  the  turns  of  his  educational  planning  in 
Wilhelm  's  love  and  labor  with  Felix.  We  may 
well  see  in  it  his  desperate  effort  to  ward  off 
the  tragic  consequences  of  his  deed.  In  the 
Novel  the  son  Felix  is  saved,  but  in  the  hard 
reality  of  life  the  son  August  perishes. 

In  such  way  we  have  to  bring  before  us 
the  most  intimate  and  searching  problem  of 
Goethe's  entire  Second  Period  during  which 
his  only  surviving  child  was  to  be  educated. 
The  mother  in  this  sphere  does  not  count  ex- 
cept possibly  as  a  disturber,  for  she  had  the 
name  of  coddling  and  spoiling  her  boy  dread- 
fully, to  which  Goethe  himself  showed  a  ten- 
dency. Christiane  possessed  the  least  edu- 
cation, and  drew  a  weak  bridle  on  her  im- 
pulse. School  boys  are  the  greatest  teasers 
and  even  persecutors  in  the  world;  and  Au- 
gust venturing  among  his  playmates,  could 
not  help  hearing  that  ugly  word  Bastard,  and 
an  even  more  humiliating  well-known  Shakes- 
pearean epithet  applied  to  his  mother.  In 
these  boys  we  may  well  see  the  institution 
wreaking  its  penalty  upon  the  parents  who 
had  violated  it  and  persisted  in  their  viola- 
tion. But  the  wretched  innocent  offspring 
has  to  suffer  and  is  tragic. 

Thus  we  may  fully  understand  that  Goe- 


THE  PASSING  OF  GOETHE'S  SON.  579 

the  writes  this  educational  Novel  from  his 
own  nethermost  experience.  He  also  gets  to 
seeing  that  all  literature,  whatever  be  the 
form,  is  in  its  ultimate  goal,  educative,  and 
belongs  to  the  universal  Institute  of  Educa- 
tion, whose  supreme  function  is  to  reproduce 
in  every  born  soul  the  institutional  world  in 
which  it  has  to  live.  But  here  is  a  child  born 
uninstitutionally;  how  is  he  to  be  rescued 
from  the  negation  involved  in  his  very  ex- 
istence? To  be  sure  Goethe  did  at  last  le- 
gally marry  Christiane;  but  the  evil  was 
done,  even  if  the  son  looked  on,  being  then 
over  sixteen  years  old,  "with  great  delight, " 
it  is  said,  for  he  had  already  felt  the  Hell  of 
his  origin.  Still  he  did  not  and  could  not  es- 
cape from  it.  In  the  Novel  the  illegitimate 
son  is  called  Felix  who  is  the  happy,  and  the 
happy-making  boy;  but  August  was  the  un- 
happy one  both  in  relation  to  himself  and  to 
his  father,  verily  the  Infelix. 


III. 

The  Passing  of  Goethe's  Son. 

We  have  already  noted  that  through  Goe- 
the's life-poem  written  out  in  multitudinous 
forms  runs  also  a  life-tragedy  unwritten  by 
him,  but  enacted  during  more  than  forty 


580       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

years  in  many  a  scene  which  rouses  the  tragic 
catharsis  of  fear  and  pity.  That  son  of  his, 
born  out  of  wedlock,  then  legitimated,  finally 
married,  and  becoming  himself  the  father  of 
a  family,  perished  at  Rome,  on  the  very  spot 
where  his  own  father  broke  through  institu- 
tional restraint,  and  lived  the  life  of  a  Ti- 
tan defiant  of  the  world's  social  order.  This 
defiance  he  carried  back  with  him  to  Weimar, 
and  one  of  his  first  actions,  after  his  return 
from  Italy  was  to  establish  his  free  life  of 
Eome  in  his  relation  to  the  humble  maiden 
Christiane,  utterly  regardless  of  the  age- 
honored  prescription  of  the  Family.  In  due 
time  a  son  was  born  an  outcast  from  the  es- 
tablished society  around  him  without  any 
fault  of  his  own,  but  assuredly  with  the  fault 
of  the  father,  and  to  a  less  degree  of  the 
mother.  Thus  the  poor  boy  was  from  the 
start  the  child  not  merely  of  a  sudden  up- 
burst  of  secret  passion,  but  of  a  long-con- 
tinued deliberate  open  transgression  against 
man's  primal  institution,  the  domestic.  He 
was  deprived  of  his  primordial  human  right, 
that  of  being  born,  not  as  an  animal  in  the 
wilds  but  as  person  in  a  society  which  would 
recognize  him  as  one  of  its  own. 

August  Goethe  started  for  Italy  with  Eck- 
ermann  in  April,  1830.  The  environment  of 
Weimar  had  become  unendurable,  and  he  had 


THE  PASSING  OF  GOETHE'S  SON.  581 

resolved  to  break  loose,  cost  what  it  may. 
As  his  father  and  his  grandfather  had  gone 
to  Italy  at  an  epochal  time  of  their  lives,  so 
he  fell  upon  the  same  idea.  He  had  not  re- 
deemed the  blot  on  his  escutcheon  by  worthy 
deeds;  such  a  manful  fight  with  his  fate  lay 
not  in  him.  The  consequence  was  that  in  a 
kind  of  despair  he  had  resigned  himself  to 
inherited  tendencies,  coming  through  both 
father  and  mother,  chief  of  which  were 
drunkenness  and  lechery.  Thus  he  had 
helped  to  build  his  own  Inferno  in  addition 
to  the  transmitted  one  from  his  parents.  His 
utter  decadence  was  whispered  through  all 
Weimar,  and  must  have  been  well  known  to 
his  father,  as  it  was  to  his  wife  Ottilia,  who 
did  not  fail  to  let  her  protests  be  heard.  A 
most  unhappy  disrupted  household  was  the 
result  from  which  the  aged  poet  often  fled  for 
peace  and  work.  But  in  the  deepest  soul  of 
him  he  must  have  felt  that  the  awful  situa- 
tion involving  himself  and  his  posterity 
sprang  from  his  deed,  the  curse  was  coming 
back.  Still  it  is  remarkable  how  silent  his 
lip  and  pen,  so  often  his  confessional,  kept 
upon  this  theme,  the  tragedy  of  all  Goethe's 
tragedies.  •  Perhaps,  however,  here  and  there 
we  may  catch  up  a  word  pulsing  uncon- 
trolledly  out  of  his  heart.  One  report  comes 
down  that  over  the  death  of  his  son  he  broke 


582       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

out  in  the  midst  of  a  conversation:  "When 
he  went  away,  I  gave  him  up  as  lost;"  then 
he  dismissed  the  company.  There  is  little 
doubt  that  the  poet  had  held  that  opinion  for 
years:  how  could  help  it!  He  had  poetic- 
ally seen  and  sung  of  the  Furies  who  pursue 
human  guilt  through  generations;  listen 
again  to  that  uncanny  strain  of  the  Parcae  in 
his  Iphigenia  whose  power  bursts  up  from 
his  last  conviction.  That  was  written  many 
years  since,  but  time  has  furiously  confirmed 
its  truth  in  his  own  life.  That  chorus  of  one 
of  his  dramas  prophetically  chants  itself 
through  his  whole  life-drama. 

What  Goethe 's  own  circle  of  acquaintances 
thought  of  the  son's  condition  and  forecast 
concerning  his  future  doom  just  before  his 
Italian  journey  is  indicated  in  the  letter  of  a 
Weimar  lady  which  has  been  preserved: 
"The  saddest  thing  is  that  all  who  could  ob- 
serve August  in  the  last  year,  including  his 
father,  had  to  feel  that  his  decease  was  the 
mildest  thing  that  could  happen. "  And  that 
son  himself  in  his  deeper  moments  seemed  to 
have  a  premonition  of  whither  he  was  drift- 
ing. Here  we  put  that  unique  little  poem  of 
his,  gushing  up  from  his  soul's  depths  with 
an  intensity  equal  to  any  lines  his  father 
ever  wrote  and  flinging  down  his  challenge 
to  Fate  itself: 


THE  PASSING  OF  GOETHE'S  SON.  583 

I  shall  no  longer  be  guided 
In  leading  strings  as  hitherto : 
Bather  I  shall  break  my  chains 
At  the  edge  of  the  abyss  and  go  free. 

In  this  spirit,  already  long  cherished  and 
long  suppressed,  he  at  last  set  out  for  Italy. 
The  startled  Eckermann,  his  companion,  who 
was  not  courting  that  sort  of  a  destiny, 
turned  back  when  the  two  had  reached  Genua, 
at  the  entrance  of  Italy,  and  had  taken  a  peep 
over  the  edge  of  the  abyss.  August  Goethe 
pushed  on  as  if  scourged  by  the  Eumenides 
to  his  last  lot,  guzzling  enormous  quantities 
of  drink,  but  sending  to  his  father  a  regular 
diary  of  what  he  saw,  but  not  of  what  he  im- 
bibed. Eckermann,  gentle  exemplary  soul, 
sent  along  by  the  anxious  old  man  as  a  model 
and  a  restraint  for  the  son,  is  utterly  help- 
less before  a  spirit  who,  having  now  gotten 
loose,  is  determined  to  break  through  all  his 
restraints  hitherto  and  dare  his  very  exist- 
ence. So  the  rather  timid  conductor  went 
far  enough  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  awful 
hand  of  Fate,  ready  to  smite  the  defiant 
transgressor,  and  shrank  back  from  a  task 
which  neither  he  nor  any  mortal  could  fulfil. 
He  received  Goethe's  consent  to  give  up  the 
journey.  To  be  sure,  when  he  appeared  at 
Weimar  he  told  an  other  reason  for  his  re- 
turn, good  enough  for  public  use.  The  aged 


584        GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

parent,  having  read  the  inevitable  decree,  re- 
ceived him  without  reproach. 

The  Italian  trip  of  August  Goethe  bears 
the  impress  of  a  hurried  feverish  sweep  to  a 
desperate  end.  Several  times  he  was  laid 
up  with  illness  chiefly  from  his  excesses ;  but 
accident  also  played  in  to  help  along,  when 
his  collar  bone  was  broken  by  the  overturn- 
ing of  his  vehicle.  Still  he  always  got  up 
again  and  at  last  reached  Naples.  At  Pom- 
peii a  lava-buried  house  was  excavated  in  his 
presence  to  celebrate  his  father's  birthday. 
It  would  seem  that  he  found  in  this  old  city,- 
overwhelmed  in  a  mighty  cataclysmic  stroke 
of  destiny,  a  peculiar,  even  sympathetic  de- 
light, as  if  he  felt  at  home  on  that  fated  spot. 
So  Goethe  reports  of  him  to  Zelter.  But  soon 
he  hastens  to  Borne,  the  darling  of  his  father. 
There  he  is  nobly  received  by  the  German 
artists,  and  in  a  hectic  exaltation  he  begins  to 
survey  its  treasures.  But  his  life's  structure 
was  already  burned  out  and  ready  to  fall  in. 
Very  gently  speaks  the  broken  parent  fore- 
feeling  what  is  about  to  happen:  "His  let- 
ters thence  failed  to  satisfy  me ;  they  showed 
haste,  a  sickly  excitement."  Enough;  Au- 
gust died  at  Eome  October  27,  1830,  of  a 
stroke  of  paralysis,  according  to  the  diag- 
nosis. 

One  cannot  help  thinking  of  the  symbolism 


•rf- 
THE  PASSING  OF  GOETHE'S  SON.  585 

suggested  by  this  sudden  human  exit  on  the 
spot  where  the  parent  had,  some  forty  years 
before,  deemed  himself  born  again.  But 
what  was  life  to  the  parent  was  death  to  the 
son.  Is  there  any  supremely  ordered  connec- 
tion between  these  two  events!  Tell  us,  ye 
Powers,  was  August  Goethe  spiritually  be- 
gotten here  and  has  only  rounded  out  the 
hidden  cycle  of  his  existence!  Is  it  possible 
to  forget  those  Roman  Elegies  in  which  the 
poet  lets  us  glimpse  the  undercurrent  of  his 
passion's  life  at  Rome  even  if  they  are 
inspired  by  Christiane  at  Weimar!  The  son 
lies  buried  in  the  Protestant  cemetery  near 
the  lonely  Pyramid  of  Cestius,  a  sphynx-like 
monument  stolid  in  its  Egyptian  melancholy, 
where  his  father  once  sketched  in  a  pensive 
Roman  mood  his  own  grave,  and  later  in  one 
of  his  Elegies  sang  prayerfully  that  the  God 
Hermes,  conductor  of  departed  souls,  "gent- 
ly lead  him  down  to  Orcus,  past  the  tomb  of 
Cestius. "  The  much-enduring  poet,  now 
eighty-one  years,  stood  up  valiantly  against 
the  stroke  of  destiny,  and  could  not  be  put 
down,  recovering  from  a  dangerous  hemor- 
rhage which  struck  him  not  long  afterwards. 
In  this  last  act  of  August  Goethe's  life  it 
is  impossible  not  to  think  of  the  poet's  Eu- 
phorion,  son  of  Faust  and  Helen,  and  to  re- 
call the  soulful  dirge  sung  over  his  early 


586       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

evanishment  in  the  Second  Part  of  Faust. 
That  youth  "was  born  to  Earth's  fortune  of 
lofty  ancestry, "  but  he  was  "early  lost  to 
himself,  and  the  bloom  of  life  was  torn 
away."  The  strain  was  intended  for  Byron, 
recently  deceased,  who  passed  beyond  some 
six  years  before  August  Goethe.  But  the  lat- 
ter, too,  ran  "unrestrainedly  into  the  net  of 
impulse, "  defiantly  breaking  "with  custom 
and  law,"  with  the  realm  of  established  or- 
der. So  it  was  not  given  "thee  to  perform 
the  glorious  action."  Prophetically  the  fa- 
ther sings  here  a  dirge  over  his  own  son, 
whom  he  then  forefelt  to  be  fated,  to  be  "lost 
to  himself, ' '  aye  a  scion  of  the  God-shent  race 
of  Tantalids. 

The  dread,  ever-lowering  thought  of  being 
members  of  a  doomed  family  broke  out  in  a 
letter  of  1848  from  one  of  Goethe's  grand- 
children who  designated  himself  and  his  sur- 
viving brother  as  "the  relicts  of  the  house 
of  Tantalus."  The  passage  seems  to  imply 
that  it  was  a  familiar  conception  in  the  fam- 
ily; whence  did  it  take  its  rise?  We  repeat 
our  decided  belief  that  it  came  down  from 
Goethe  himself,  upon  whom  the  premonition 
must  have  been  lastingly  impressed  by  his 
long  and  intense  occupation  with  the  legend 
of  Tantalus,  who  though  favored  of  the  Gods, 
nevertheless  sinned  against  them,  and  whose 


THE  PASSING  OF  GOETHE'S  SON.  587 

posterity  continued  to  feel  the  scourge  of  the 
ancestor's  guilt.  The  story  of  Iphigenia, 
who  was  a  Tantalid  wrestling  with  the  curse 
of  her  blood  and  finally  redeeming  it,  haunted 
him  his  whole  life,  for  he  could  not  help  feel- 
ing that  he  was  realizing  it  in  himself  and  in 
his  own.  Walther  Von  Goethe,  from  whom 
the  above  citation  is  taken,  was  doubtless 
echoing  some  word  of  his  grandfather 
dropped  casually  from  the  most  veiled  part 
of  the  poet's  soul.  The  aforesaid  Walther 
sighs  forth  another  exclamation  in  the  same 
letter:  "The  realm  of  the  Eumenides  is 
drawing  to  an  end ! ' '  This  can  only  mean  a 
presentiment  that  with  the  decease  of  him- 
self and  his  brother,  both  of  them  unmarried 
and  childless,  the  tragedy  of  the  German 
Tantalids  will  come  to  a  close.  And  that  is 
what  actually  happened  not  many  years 
afterward. 

Very  significant  is  the  fact  that  this  tragic 
outcome  was  foreshadowed  by  Goethe  the 
poet  even  before  he  had  committed  the  deed. 
Forgive  us  if  we  once  more  repeat  the  song 
echoing  the  deepest,  most  prophetic  note  of 
Goethe's  Genius,  the  song  of  the  Fates  in  his 
Iphigenia,  which  was  composed  by  him  be- 
fore he  had  ever  seen  Christiane.  It  chants 
that  the  Celestials  turn  away  their  joy- giving 
look  "from  races  ill-fated,"  and  shun  to 


588        GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

gaze  "on  the  children's  once-loved  features 
still  telling  of  their  mighty  parent. ' '  So  the 
poet  foresings  of  himself  and  his  son  and  his 
son's  sons,  projecting  out  of  his  vision  of  the 
Divine  Order  the  consequences  of  the  act  of 
insolence  toward  the  Gods,  which  neverthe- 
less he  was  on  the  point  of  doing,  the  fateful 
mortal.  The  Hymn  winds  up  with  a  predic- 
tion suggestive  of  the  future  of  Tantalus— 
of  Goethe :  "The  soul  under  ban  hearkens  the 
song,  his  children's  doom  he  ponders  and 
bows  down  his  head. ' '  So  the  poet,  truly  the 
seer  and  foreseer,  tells  of  himself  and  his  off- 
spring long  before  any  child  of  his  has  been 
born. 

Such  was  the  deepest  strand  of  destiny  in 
Goethe's  whole  existence;  still  he  wrestled 
with  it,  he  never  gave  up,  hence  he  was  what 
he  so  often  exhorted  others  to  be — the  Fate- 
compeller.  He  never  succumbed  to  his  own 
failings  despite  their  terrible  backstrokes; 
he  never  became  the  victim  of  his  own  nega- 
tive deed,  even  if  he  had  to  walk  through  its 
infernal  fires.  Though  his  descendants  were 
Tantalids  and  unheroically  perished  in  their 
allotted  portion,  Goethe  was  in  this  sense  not 
Tantalus;  he  was  often  whelmed  into  Tar- 
tarus by  the  Gods  for  his  offenses,  but  he 
could  not  be  kept  there,  he  would  break  jail, 
even  that  of  the  underworld.  His  supreme 


THE  PASSING  OF  GOETHE'S  SON.  589 

gift  of  expression  was  able  to  persuade  the 
Furies  to  unchain  him,  and  his  life-poem  is 
Prometheus  unbound  by  himself.  Already 
we  have  noted  how  he  often  saved  himself 
from  the  final  stroke  through  his  literary 
confession. 

At  present  his  mediatorial  word  is  renun- 
ciation, whose  most  trying  test  he  has  just 
passed  through.  The  only  son,  so  long  the 
darling  of  his  heart  and  his  hope,  he  has  had 
to  renounce  to  Fate,  indeed  he  has  done  so 
already  a  good  many  years,  for  that  son  was 
"early  lost  to  himself, "  already  in  youth  a 
Tantalid.  In  this  final  Epoch  of  his  life- 
poem  Goethe  was  his  own  greatest  renunci- 
ant ;  we  have  already  seen  him  as  Phileros  re- 
nouncing his  last  love ;  he  has  brought  before 
us  a  world  of  renunciants,  in  his  Meister's 
Journey manship;  then  this  crowning  trial  in 
the  death  of  his  only  son  he  has  to  meet  and 
transcend  through  a  fresh  renunciation;  but 
he,  the  octogenarian,  does  it  with  renewed 
valor  and  starts  to  work  that  he  complete  the 
final  achievement  of  his  life.  ' '  Forward  over 
graves  M  he  cries,  even  over  the  graves  of  his 
own  blood;  he  has  yet  to  finish  his  world- 
poem,  whose  thread  has  been  spun  through 
his  entire  conscious  existence.  Faust  must 
be  brought  to  an  end  ere  his  eyelids  can 
droop  to  their  final  close. 


590       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

IV. 

Faust — Second  Part. 

Perhaps  the  most  condemned  of  all  Goe- 
the 's  works  is  this,  certainly  the  worst  under- 
stood and  the  least  accessible  to  the  average 
consciousness.  Still  it  keeps  working  its  way 
in  its  own  country  and  elsewhere.  Though 
it  has  been  adjudged  to  death,  execrated  and 
executed  a  thousand  times  by  a  furious  army 
of  critics  and  maddened  readers,  even  hung 
in  effigy  by  Herr  Professor  Vischer,  it  never- 
theless stands  up  alive,  and  pushes  ahead  on 
its  course  with  a  considerable  increment  of 
vigor.  It  has  quietly  become  a  test  of  the 
literary  size  and  quality  of  the  people  who 
fling  it  aside  with  a  wry  face  after  some  in- 
spection. It  shows  a  decided  tendency  to 
criticise  the  critic,  to  measure  its  measurer 
while  in  the  very  act  of  measuring  it  and 
marking  down  its  limits.  A  dangerous  sub- 
ject to  handle  it  must  be  regarded;  we  may 
often  notice  its  peculiar  gift  of  turning  the 
weapon  directed  against  it  to  a  boomerang 
which  gives  back  to  the  assailant  not  only 
what  he  has  done  but  what  he  really  is. 

In  spite  of  the  aforesaid  danger,  it  may 
well  be  confessed  that  the  Second  Part  of 
Faust  has  obscurities  upon  which  the  sun  re- 


I 

FAUST— SECOND   PART.  591 

fuses  to  shine,  and  sandy  tracts  in  which  the 
traveler  longs  for  some  greenery  and  a  drop 
of  water;  then  we  come  upon  not  a  few 
chasms  over  which  the  bridge  has  to  be  taken 
for  granted.  Very  much  like  the  huge, 
sphinx-like  face  of  nature  is  the  whole  poem, 
which  must  be  explored  by  every  reader  as 
an  undiscovered  country.  Still  we  cannot 
well  fling  away  the  earth-ball  because  it  car- 
ries on  its  surface  a  dreary  Sahara  or  an  in- 
accessible Chimborazo. 

Evidently  Faust  would  not  be  the  complete 
ronnded-off  work  that  it  is  without  the  Sec- 
ond Part ;  only  a  fragment  of  its  own  poetic 
universe  would  we  then  possess — surely  a 
lapse  from  its  supreme  worth.  In  fact  this 
poem  could  not  in  such  case  take  its  present 
lofty  rank  in  the  realm  of  Letters  as  one  of 
the  four  greatest  books  which  Europe  has 
produced — books  of  such  transcendent  power 
and  significance  that  we  call  them  Literary 
Bibles.  Just  through  this  completed  Faust, 
Goethe  has  taken  his  place  with  Homer, 
Dante,  and  Shakespeare.  Excellent  as  are 
many  of  his  other  writings,  he  has  concen- 
trated himself  in  the  one  sovereign  achieve- 
ment by  which  he  is  ranked  in  universal  Lit- 
erature. To  be  sure,  his  entire  career  and 
all  his  works  constitute  one  vast  life-poem  of 
which  his  Faust  is  but  a  single  strand,  though 


592       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

the  most  essential  and  characteristic  of  him- 
self and  of  his  time. 

Accordingly  we  put  stress  here  upon  the 
fact  that  the  First  Part  alone  cannot  rise  to 
the  supremacy  of  a  Literary  Bible.  It  is  in 
itself  but  a  half,  and  on  several  lines  decid- 
edly the  lesser  half  of  the  grand  poetic  total- 
ity, which  crowns  its  maker  with  the  ideal 
sovereignty  of  his  age.  On  the  whole, .the 
First  Part  is  no^  only  a  fragment  but  a  neg- 
ative fragment^  its  dominant  note  is  the 
eternal  No  which  kills  man's  hope  and  turns 
him  into  a  destroying  spirit  of  society  and  of 
himself. Ji  Satan  is  triumphant  in  Paradise 
Lost;  and  that  is  the  doom  of  Milton's  book 
as  a  Literary  Bible  for  the  race.  The  Pro- 
metheus of  Aeschylus,  as  it  has  come  down  to 
us,  is  a  negative  poem,  and  leaves  man  de- 
feated in  the  person  of  his  divine  protag- 
onist. So  is  essentially  the  First  Part  of 
Faust  taken  by  itself,  even  if  it  be  more  cap- 
tivating through  its  smiting  style  and  Hell- 
lit  mockery.  It  is  OIL  the  whole  a  descent  to 
the  modern  Inferno,  (while  the  Second  Part 

|  is  an  ascent,  showing  the  negation  overcome, 
and  the  hero 's  regeneration  through  his  own 

/  activit^  Thus  it  carries  with  it  from  start 
to  finish  a  sense  of  restoration  after  the  Fall 
of  Man  in  the  latest  phase,  and  on  this  line 
moves  parallel  with  all  true  Bibles  religious 


FAUST— SECOND   PART.  593 

or  literary.  The  First  Part  is  then  truly  a 
part,  the  diabolic  part  of  the  poem,  and  may 
be  defined  as  its  spirit  Mephistopheles  de- 
fines himself,  "a  part  of  that  power  which 
wills  the  Bad,"  even  if  in  the  end  "it  works 
the  Good. " 

This  leads  us  to  note  the  distinctive  char- 
acter which  MepMstopheles  unfolds  in  the 
Second  Part,  quite  trte  obverse  of  what  he 
has  shown  hitherto.  (He  is  no  longer  the  lord 
of  the  poetic  mansion  but  the  servant ;  though 
still  destructive  at  the  first  turn,  he  is  recon- 
structive at  the  last ;  he  is  not  only  negative, 
but  self-negative,  and  as  universal  denier  he 
comes  in  the  end  to  deny  himself  At  the 
opening  of  the  Second  Part  he  enters  the 
State  as  destroyer,  sapping  old  Feudalism 
but  bringing  forth  modern  industrial  Society. 
He  violently  sweeps  away  ancient  Philemon 
and  Baucis,  but  therein  renders  possible  the 
new  city  of  Faust  and  its  freedom.  (His  sub- 
tle doing  of  evil  unfolds  through  his  own  self- 
undoing  unto  the  good.  He  is  the  very  in- 
carnation of  evil  done  that  good  may  come) 
We  repeat  that  this  inner  but  very  elusive 
dialectic  runs  through  his  whole  manifesta- 
tion in  the  Second  Part  and  constitutes  the 
deepest  thread  of  its  connection.  The  reader 
who  cannot  penetrate  to  this  undercurrent 
and  swim  in  it  and  with  it  through  all  the 


594        GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

eddies  and  tortuosities  of  the  poem,  remains 
but  an  outsider,  enjoying  possibly  many  of 
its  single  beauties  and  gazing  at  its  passing 
meteors  often  in  blank  perplexity. 

It  is  not  simply  the  old  Goethe,  but  the 
oldest  unfolding  to  his  final  evolution  and 
making  his  last  confession  preparatory  to 
the  close  and  evanishment  beyond.  He  has 
shown  himself  a  free  man,  upon  a  free  soil 
which  he  has  created,  and  in  a  free  civic 
world  which  he  has  built.  He  has  trans- 
cended in  his  deed  the  limit  of  Fate  and  then 
dies;  through  death  he  persists,  "the  trace  of 
my  earthly  days  cannot  vanish  in  the  ages." 
He  has  made  mortality  mortal,  serving  it  up 
to  itself,  and  thus  rising  to  immortality;  the 
tragedy  of  existence  he  enacts,  yet  makes  it 
tragic  to  itself  rather  than  to  himself.  It  is 
the  last  and  deepest  turn  of  that  self-nega- 
tion which  gives  the  soul  of  this  Second  Part, 
and  is  symbolized  in  Mephistopheles  as  the 
/ceaseless  ujidoer  of  himself  in  the  final  round- 
Vp  of  his  activity. 

The  Second  Part  sends  its  rootlets  back 
into  Goethe's  early  Epoch  at  Frankfort,  that 
unique  springtide  of  his  whole  life,  when  his 
overflowing  creative  soul  started  to  germi- 
nate. In  an  oft-cited  letter  to  Wilhelm  Von 
Humboldt,  written  only  five  days  before  his 
death  (1832)  he  says:  "It  is  over  sixty 


FAUST— SECOND  PART.          595 

years  since  the  first  conception  of  Faust  lay 
before  me  clear,  but  the  succession  of  its 
parts  less  complete. "  There  is  no  doubt  that 
the  appearance  of  Greek  Helen  was  an  ele- 
ment of  this  earliest  conception,  for  she  be- 
longs to  the  primal  Faust  legend,  to  the  pup- 
pet play,  and  to  Marlow's  drama.  But  he 
had  not  then  conceived  of  the  two  Parts  of 
his  work;  he  had  to  grow  many  years  into 
such  magnitude  of  design.  Greek  Helen  gave 
him  great  difficulty;  she  does  not  appear  in 
the  Urfaust  nor  in  the  Fragment  of  1790; 
still  she  belongs  essentially  to  the  story  and 
keeps  teasing  the  author  off  and  on  during 
three  decades.  At  last  in  1800  he  grapples 
with  Helen  in  person  and  by  herself,  he  pro- 
poses daringly  to  catch  her  fleeting  shape  and 
to  charm  her  into  writ.  But  he  cannot  do  it 
yet,  another  three  decades  he  has  to  wait; 
not  till  1827  was  the  Lesser  Helena  published, 
being  saluted  in  English  with  a  subtle  and 
laudatory  review  by  the  rising  Phil-Teuton 
Thomas  Carlyle.  But  the  whole  Helena  of  the 
Second  Part,  the  Greater  Helena  we  may  call 
it  for  distinction  (see  our  Commentary  on 
Part  II,  p.  85)  taking  up  more  than  half  of 
the  poem,  was  not  finished  till  some  four 
years  later.  A  little  before  1800,  accordingly, 
perhaps  already  in  1797,  the  necessity  of  di- 
viding his  work  into  two  Parts  had  dawned 


596        GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART   THIRD. 

upon  the  poet.  But  between  them  raged  in 
his  soul  the  conflict  of  the  Classic  and  the 
Teutonic  elements  of  his  work,  and  he  could 
not  yet  harmonize  the  contradiction.  So  he 
dropped  the  one,  the  Classic,  and  sped  on  to 
finish  the  other  in  the  First  Part,  which  he 
did  by  1806,  though  it  was  not  published  till 
two  years  later. 

Faithful  Eckermann  records  that  he  was 
assisting  Goethe  to  look  over  his  papers  for 
the  purpose  of  completing  the  final  portion 
of  his  Autobiography,  when  the  question  of 
the  continuation  of  Faust  arose.  Shall  the 
plan  be  merely  described,  or  shall  "the  fin- 
ished fragments "  of  the  Second  Part  which 
lay  there  before  them  be  supplemented  and 
worked  over  into  a  whole  ?  Eckermann  urged 
it,  but  that  was  not  enough.  The  aged  poet 
was  brought  to  turn  the  whole  subject  over 
in  his  mind  afresh,  and  to  ask  himself :  Can 
I  finish  this  work  now,  after  all  these  new 
experiences  of  life?  (He  must  have  felt  that 
he  had  compassed  in  himself  Helen's  whole 
career  as  representing  the  Classic  Kenas- 
cence  of  his  time^  He  had  gone  through  her 
long  discipline,  but  had  transcended  her,  and 
so  could  portray  her  training  and  her  trag- 
edy in  the  universal  poem.  But  how  about 
Faust  himself?  Sometime  in  the  early  years 
of  the  century  the  new  industrial  world  had 


FAUST— SECOND   PART.  597 

risen  upon  the  poet  with  a  mighty  energy,  as 
we  see  already  in  his  Pandora  and  especially 
in  Meister's  Journey  mansliip.  In  that  great 
movement  of  the  time,  Faust  was  to  share 
and  at  last  to  end  as  its  hero  positively.  But 
what  of  negative  Mephistopheles?  Goethe 
has  in  these  long  years  of  study  and  experi- 
ence realized  the  inner  nature  of  negation  as 
self -undoing ;  thus  he  can  handle  the  deepest 
character  of  the  age,  and  indeed  of  himself. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  he  now  feels,  as  never 
before,  that  he  can  complete  the  transcendent 
poetic  task  of  his  life.  And  so  the  old  man 
with  a  reborn  heart,  resolves  to  set  about  the 
grand  final  fulfilment  of  himself,  more  heroic 
in  his  life-poem  than  any  of  his  heroes. 

Here  we  should  note  that  Goethe,  though 
especially  disclaiming  the  title  of  philoso- 
pher, studied  profoundly  the  philosophy  of 
his  time,  and  appropriated  it  in  his  way,  and 
of  course  put  it  into  his  poem.  We  may  re- 
peat that  he  flourished  in  the  very  bloom  of 
the  supreme  philosophical  movement  of 
the  modern  world  from  Kant  to  Hegel,  and 
poetized  it  in  numerous  ways.  But  the  most 
colossal  envisagement  of  it  is  just  Mephis- 
topheles in  his  total  sweep  from  the  first  No 
at  the  start  of  the  poem  till  his  final  defeat  at 
its  end.  He  quite  parallels  the  cycle  of  Ger- 
man Philosophy  from  Kant's  Titanic  denial 


598       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

to  HegePs  equally  Titanic  affirmation.  It  is 
a  mistake  to  make  Faust  a  poetic  embodiment 
of  any  given  system  of  Philosophy,  a  mistake 
which  not  a  few  of  HegePs  ardent  disciples 
have  committed.  On  the  other  hand  Goethe, 
the  all-learner  absorbed  not  a  little  from  the 
Philosophy  of  his  day,  especially  from  Hegel 
who  was  professor  in  Goethe's  university, 
Jena,  at  the  very  time  when  the  poet  was 
deeply  engaged  in  his  First  Part  of  Faust, 
jwhose  innermost  theme  is  the  evolution  of 
iMephistopheles  out  of  the  age's  spirit  of  ne- 
gation. 

Now  the  permanent  contribution  of  Hegel 
to  his  time  and  to  all  time  is  not  his  system 
which  has  already  crumbled,  but  the  inner 
spirit  working  in  man  and  in  all  finitude, 
which  he  caught,  diagnosed  and  exemplified 
thousandfold  in  his  works,  and  named  Dia- 
lectic. Goethe  may  never  have  fully  caught 
this  very  elusive  principle  in  its  abstract 
form,  but,  poet  that  he  was,  he  concreted  it  to 
living  shape  in  Mephistopheles,  and  made  it 
pervasive  throughout  the  whole  length  of  his 
living  poem  (not  including  the  rather  dead  or 
dying  ecclesiastical  appendix).  Therein  he 
above  all  other  scribes  of  the  period  made  the 
time-spirit  show  itself  in  writ.  Thus  we  may 
well  hold  that  this  Faust  poem  in  the  last 
depths  of  its  soul  is  one  with  the  soul  of  the 


FAUST— SECOND   PART.  599 

time's  Philosophy,  both  being  ultimately  ut- 
terances of  the  one  basis  consciousness  of  the 
age.  In  this  sense  we  can  call  it  the  most 
philosophic  of  poems,  with  Schelling  and 
others. 

Still  there  is  one  scene  in  the  Second  Part 
in  which  the  poet  took  a  pre-conceived  philo- 
sophic thought,  and  gave  to  it  a  poetic  form. 
This  scene  is  known  to  all  deeper  students  of 
the  poem  as  The  Mothers.  A  dark  uncanny, 
unearthly  piece  of  work  it  is,  in  which  Faust 
is  to  descend  to  the  primitive  forms  or  arche- 
Ltypes  creative  of  all  finitude;  the  very  proc- 
ess of  abstraction  is  poetized  or  at  least  me- 
tered  and  rhymed,  until  there  dawns  upon 
him  the  ultimate  insight  expressed  abstractly 
with  the  words  £  "In  thy  Nothing  I  hope  to 
find  the  All.")  This  may  be  regarded  as  the 
philosophy  of  Mephistopheles,  now  to  be 
grasped  by  Faust,  and  to  be  realized  in  the 
poem.  It  hints  that  play  of  the  negative, 
with  its  inherent  contradiction  and  final  self- 
undoing,  which  brings  forth  the  Universe  as 
positive,  here  the  All.  So  much  Goethe 
picked  up  from  the  Philosophy  of  the  time 
and  diabolized  it  as  the  destroyer  turning 
self-destroyer.  (For  a  further  discussion  of 
this  pivotal  scene  see  our  Commentary  Faust 
II,  p.  89,  etc.,  new  edition.) 

Evidently  Goethe  has  inhaled  the  quintes- 


600       GOETHE'S  LIFE-POEM.— PART  THIRD. 

sence  of  the  great  German  philosophical 
movement,  and  breathed  it  forth  into  a  char- 
acter which  acts  it  out  from  start  to  finish. 
And  here  we  should  not  fail  to  note  again  the 
the  poet's  present  method:  he  seizes  upon  a 
pure  idea  in  advance  and  creates  a  shape  for 
it,  or  perchance  he  makes  it  create  its  own 
shape.  This  is  quite  the  opposite  of  the  po- 
etic procedure  which  he  enounced  so  emphat- 
ically in  his  early  career:  namely,  that  we 
must  first  grasp  the  reality  and  idealize  that. 
But  he  has  found  in  his  long  experience  that 
both  poetic  methods  are  valid,  each  in  its  own 
sphere.  So  he  in  his  old  age  breaks  over  his 
early  limit  and  gives  an  outlook  upon  the  new 
poetry.  It  was  probably  the  mighty  tide  of 
Philosophy  rising  to  its  culmination  during 
his  life  which  drove  him  to  poetize  such  a 
phenomenon,  and  to  forge  the  outlines  of  a 
new  art-form  for  its  expressoin.  So  on  this 
side  as  on  others,  the  Second  Part  of  Faust 
is  prophetic,  letting  us  glimpse  a  new  inspira- 
tion, and  even  a  New  Mythology,  not  the 
transmitted  old  one  in  any  of  its  many  kinds, 
but  the  fresh  created  one  by  the  poet  to  peo- 
ple his  poetical  cosmos. 

It  is  recorded  that  in  August,  1831,  the 
Second  Part  6*f  Faust  was  complete  so  that 
the  manuscript  was  stitched  together  and  laid 
away.  He  said  to  Eckermann:  "the  rest  of 


FAUST— SECOND   PART.  601 

my  life  I  regard  as  a  free  gift."  Still  he 
could  not  keep  hands  off ;  he  continued  to  add 
touches  to  this  supreme  work  of  his  life  al- 
most to  the  day  of  his  death,  which  took  place 
March  22,  1832, 


BOOKS    BY  DENTON  J.  SNIDER 

PUBLISHED     BY 

SIGMA    PUBLISHING    COMPANY 
2IO  Pine  Street,  St.  Louis,  Mo. 

'..     Commentary  on  the  Literary  Bibles,  in  9  vols. 

1.  Shakespeare's  Dramas,  3  vols. 

Tragedies    (new    edition) $1.50 

Comedies   (new  edition) 1.50 

Histories    (new  edition) 1.50 

2.  Goethe's  Faust. 

First  Part    (new    edition) 1.50 

Second  Part    (new  edition) 1.50 


3.  Homer's  Iliad   (new  edition) 
Homer's    Odyssey 

4.  Dante's    Inferno... 


Dante's   Purgatory    and   Paradise. 
II.     Psychology,  System  of,  in  16  vols. 
1.     Organic  Psychology. 


1.     Intellect. 


2.  Will 

3.  Feeling  .  ,     1.50 

2.  Psychology  of  Philosophy. 

1.  Ancient    European    Philosophy 1.50 

2.  Modern  European  Philosophy 1.50 

3.  Psychology  of  Nature. 

1.  Cosmos  and  Diacosmos 1.50 

2.  Biocosmos 1.50 

4.  Psychology  of  Art. 

1.  Architecture.  .  t  , 1.50 

2.  Music  and  Fine  Arts 1.50 

5.  Psychology  of  Institutions. 

1.  Social  Institutions 1.50 

2.  The  State 1.50 

6.  Psychology  of  History. 

1.  European   History. 1.50 

2.  The  Father  of  History 1.50 

3.  The  American  Ten  Years'  War 1.50 

7.  Psychology  of  Biography. 

1.  Abraham  Linciln 1.50 

2.  Frederick  Froebel. 1.25 

III.  Poems — in  5   vols. 

1.  Homer    in    Chios 1.00 

2.  Delphic  Days    1.00 

3.  Agamemnon's    Daughter    1.00 

4.  Prorsus  Retrorsus  1.00 

5.  Johnny   Appleseed's   Rhymes 1.25 

IV.  The  Lincoln   Tetralogy — An  Epos. 

1.  Lincoln  in  the  Black  Hawk  War 1.50 

2.  Lincoln   and  Ann   Rutledge 1.50 

3.  Lincoln  in  the  White  House 1.50 

4.  Lincoln  at  Richmond 1.50 

V.     Kindergarten. 

1.  Commentary  on  Froebel's  Mother  Play-Songs 1.25 

2.  The  Psychology  of  Froebel's   Play-Gifts 1.25 

3.  The  Life  of  Frederick  Froebel 1.25 

VI.     Miscellaneous. 

1.  A  Walk   in   Hellas 1.25 

2.  The  Freeburgers    (a  novel) 1.25 

3.  World's    Fair    Studies 1.25 

4.  A  Tour  in  Europe 1.50 

5.  A  Writer  of  Books  in  His  Genesis 1.50 

For  sale  by  A.  C.  McCLURG  &  CO.,  Chicago,  III. 


OJan'64PSf 
REC'D 


1    LD  21-2m-l,'33  (52m) 


O / HO  / 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


m 


